Mumbai Municipal Corporation’s ₹16,621 crore Versova-Dahisar Coastal Road project has received bids from six infrastructure firms: Larsen and Toubro (L&T), J Kumar Infraprojects, NCC Ltd, Megha Engineering, APCO Infraprojects and Afcons Infrastructure Ltd.
The civic body had floated six tenders for the project's packages in August and bids were opened on Monday. The construction includes elevated roads, a cable-stayed bridge, an arched “basket” bridge, ramps and tunnels.
Second phase
The second phase of this coastal road project will have a series of underground tunnels and bridges that will connect Versova and Dahisar. The underground tunnel will run below the creeks in Malad and Kandivali and a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) will be used for this project.
“Bids will be finalised after a technical evaluation which will take a couple of months. When that is done, the financial bids of the technically qualified bidders will be opened to reveal who’s the lowest bidder and most likely contractor for each package”, a civic official said.
Two of these six contractors Megha Engineering and NCC Ltd are the same contractors who are working on BMC’s ₹6000 crore mega road concretisation project that has invited criticism from the opposition which has labelled it ‘cartelisation’.
L&T, on the other hand, is executing the work for the current phase of the Coastal Road that will connect Marine Drive with Bandra Worli Sea Link (BWSL).
J Kumar Infraprojects is being awarded contracts pertaining to the Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR) and Mumbai metro rail project.
Project divided into six different packages
The total project is being divided into six different packages. The package A will cover 4.5 km between Versova and Bangur Nagar (Goregaon), the package B will cover 1.66 between Bangur Nagar and Mindspace (Malad).
The packages C and D includes north and south bound carriageway that will be created between Mindspace and Charkop (Kandivali). Each of these packages would be 3.66 km each.
The package E, that will be 3.78 km will connect Charkop with Gorai and the final package F will be 3.69 km will connect Gorai with Dahisar.
Of the six Versova-Dahisar Road projects - L&T has bid for A,B,E and F, APCO has bid for A, C,D and F, J Kumar for A and B, Afcons for B, C, D and E, Megha for C and D and NCC for E and F.
