The civil works on the much-awaited 22-km-long Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) connecting Sewri with Nhava-Sheva is now expected to start post monsoons next year. According to Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) officials, once the work is started it would take them around four to five years for the completion of the project.
MMRDA officials said bidders had expressed reservations about being able to meet the deadline of 2019 for the completion of the project considering the challenges of marine engineering for the project. “The process of pre-qualifying the bidders for bidding would be completed by November. Thereafter, bids for the eligible bidders would be floated and it is expected that we will complete the bidding process and issue the work order by March 2017. The actual major work for the construction of the bridge is expected to start only after the monsoon in 2017,” said a senior MMRDA official.
The MTHL is a 22-km-long cable stay bridge and will be the second longest sealink in the world after the 42-km link between Qingdao to Huandao in China.
The MMRDA, the implementing agency of the project, has already floated pre-qualification bids for the same and has shortlisted around 15 companies out of the total 39 companies that had applied. The shortlisted 15 companies would be eligible for the bidding after MMRDA gets a formal approval from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency that is funding 85 per cent of the total project cost, which is Rs 17,500 crore of which Rs 13,500 crore will be spent on civil works.
The decades-old project has been on paper since the 1980s due to lack of environmental clearances.
