'Excessively' high bids: Railways cancels tenders for redevelopment of New Delhi, Ahmedabad stations

New Delhi: The railways has cancelled the tenders for the redevelopment of the New Delhi and Ahmedabad railway stations after the bids submitted turned out to be "excessively" high compared to the cost estimated by the national transporter.

Sources said a high-level meeting will be held on Thursday to review the tender documents for the two stations.

They said since the lowest bidders quoted rates much exceeding the estimated costs, the only option left for the railways was to discharge the tenders and review those.

In September 2022, the Union Cabinet sanctioned Rs 10,000 crore for the redevelopment of three major railway stations -- New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in Mumbai.

While an amount of Rs 5,000 crore was meant for the New Delhi station, around Rs 2,000 crore were earmarked for CSMT and Rs 3,000 crore for the Ahmedabad station.

Indian infrastructure major Larsen and Toubro (L&T) emerged as the lowest bidder for the re-development of the New Delhi railway station, quoting Rs 8,740 crore. The cost estimated by the railways for the project is Rs 5,000 crore.

Similarly, construction giant Afcons Infrastructure Limited emerged as the lowest bidder for the Ahmedabad station redevelopment project, with the company quoting Rs 5,355 crore as against the railways' estimated cost of Rs 3,000 crore.

"We want to be transparent in the whole process and a review will be done and new tenders will be floated soon," a senior official said.

The redevelopment project is part of the Centre's plan to modernise high-density stations to ease passenger movement and improve the business prospects of these assets.