RailEnquiry

NEW DELHI: The railways has revived the proposal to set up an electric locomotive factory at Madhepura and a diesel locomotive factory at Marhowra, both in Bihar with the Union Cabinet giving its approval to start the bidding process for the projects afresh.The two projects were announced by Lalu Prasad in 2006 during his tenure as railway minister and they were to be set up in partnership with private players, with the railways holding 26% stake in each.The move to revive the projects seems to be in sync with the Congress's strategy to regain its lost political turf in Bihar and the UPA government's attempt to explore a potential alliance with JD(U) by extending an olive branch to chief minister Nitish Kumar.The railways had asked for the earlier bidding process to be cancelled after Planning Commission and the state-run transporter clashed on changes in the bid document.Soon after taking over as railway minister, Pawan Bansal had signaled that the PPP projects would be fast-tracked to meet the requirement of high performance locomotives.Bansal, finance minister P Chidambaram and deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia met last month to iron out the differences.The two factories will be set up in joint venture with locomotive manufacturers to be selected through international competitive bidding. The JV partners will be selected through a two-stage process. The bids will be finalized within three months of receipt of the Cabinet's approval.

As per the proposal, the estimated cost of the Madhepura electric locomotive factory is Rs 1,293.57 crore and the cost of the Marhowra project is Rs 2,052.58 crore with limited equity contribution by railways.

Over a period of 10 years, the factories will provide railways with 800 electric locomotives of 12,000 horse power (hp) each and a mix of 1,000 diesel locomotives of 4,500 and 6,000 hp with high level performance guarantees similar to international practices.