Top international players, including consortiums from China and Japan have bid to set up a Greenfield Electric Locomotive Factory at Madhepura in Bihar. The Rs 1,460 crore project envisages setting up the factory and long-term Procurement-cum-Maintenance of Electric Locomotives for Indian Railways.Responding to the Request for Qualification (RFQ) issued by the Railways Ministry, five players have bid for the project. These include Bombardier, Alstom, Siemens, a Chinese consortium comprising CSR-Zhuzhou Electric Loco Works and Monnet International and a Japanese Consortium comprising Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki.The proposed contract requires the producer to supply 660 electric locomotives of 12,000 horsepower to Indian Railways over an eight-year period. In addition, the player setting up the factory will have to undertake maintenance of these locomotives for a 20-year period.
