Mumbai: Nearly 10 firms have come forward to provide coaches – rolling stock – and spare parts for coaches for three metro corridors, including metro 3 (Colaba-Bandra-SEEPZ), metro 7 (Andheri east to Dahisar east) and metro 2A (Dahisar to D.N. Nagar).
The contractor will be responsible for providing 378 coaches for the three metro lines. The authority had floated tenders on April 19 this year.
The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will scrutinise the bids, and will award the contracts soon.
R.A. Rajeev, metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA, said, “The response we received for the rolling stock is the best till date.”
Among the companies that have come forward for the bidding are: Bombardier, Alstom, Rotem, Mitsubishi, Beml, Kaff and CRRC.
Of these, Bombardier, Alstom and Beml are Indian companies while the rest are foreign ones. According to officials, the contractors will be decided soon.
Along with providing rolling stock, the eligible contractor will be responsible for setting up signaling and telecommunications, platform screen doors, lifts, automatic fare collection (AFC) gates etc. at metro stations.
The bids were floated after much delay as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is funding the metro projects, did not approve of the “Make in India” policy.
As per ADB conditions, no purchase or price preference would be given to Indian bidders.
