Bengaluru: L&T submits lowest bid for Heelalige–Rajanukunte suburban rail civil work tender

An official from K-RIDE, which is executing the project, confirmed that L&T is the lowest bidder and the board will decide on issuing a Letter of Acceptance (LoA). Representational picture

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on August 31 emerged as the lowest bidder for the civil work tender of the 46-km Kanaka Line (Heelalige – Rajanukunte) in the Bengaluru suburban rail project.

Four firms — Larsen & Toubro Limited, Afcons Infrastructure Limited, Intarvo Technologies Limited, and Dinesh Chandra R Agrawal Infracon Private Limited — participated in the bid. Only two firms qualified in the technical bid with L&T quoting Rs 1,021 crore and the other firm, Afcons Infrastructure, quoting Rs 1,424 crore.

An official from K-RIDE (Rail Infrastructure Development Company (Karnataka) Limited), which is executing the project, confirmed to Moneycontrol that L&T is the lowest bidder and the board will decide on issuing a Letter of Acceptance (LoA).

In January, K-RIDE invited bids for the civil engineering works of the Kanaka Line, which consists of an 8.9 km elevated section and a 37.9 km at-grade section. The tender was issued on the EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) model, where agencies had to quote lump-sum prices for the elevated and at-grade sections separately.

The Kanaka Line will include stations at Rajanakunte, Muddanahalli, Yelahanka (interchange), Jakkur, Hegde Nagar, Thanisandra, Hennur, Horamavu, Channasandra, Benniganahalli (interchange), Kaggadasapura, Doddanekundi, Marathahalli, Belandur Road, Carmelaram, Ambedkar Nagar, Huskur, Singena Agrahara (future), Bommasandra (future) and Heelalige.

Sources said that the LoA will likely be issued to L&T since the firm is already working on the suburban rail's Mallige Line (Benniganahalli–Chikkabanavara).

In January 2023, K-RIDE requested SWR to hand over 193 acres of railway land for the Heelalige-Rajanukunte stretch on the Kanaka Line, however, it has yet to be transferred. K-RIDE officials said that the Sampige Line (KSR Bengaluru City-Airport-Devanahalli) civil work tender will be invited next.

However, K-RIDE has yet to sign a loan agreement with foreign financial institutions. The project fund requirement of Rs 7,438 crore (800 million euros) will be sourced from bilateral funding agencies: KfW, Germany (500 million euros) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), Luxembourg (300 million euros). K-RIDE stated that the loan agreement will be signed by December 2023.

In October 2020, the Union government approved the 149-km suburban rail project with four corridors. However, the first civil work tender for Mallige Line (Benniganahalli–Chikkabanavara) was invited only a year later in November 2021. It took almost another year to award the tender to L&T in August 2022.

The Karnataka government set the new deadline for completing the long-pending 148-km Bengaluru suburban rail project (four corridors) as 2028 on August 11.

Also, read: Eye on Bengaluru ahead of Karnataka polls: Suburban rail project moving at a snail’s pace

Three firms have expressed interest in the tender to supply air-conditioned coaches for the Bengaluru suburban rail project under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode. However, K-RIDE is yet to finalise the tender.