Manufacturing 200 Vande Bharat Trains: Consortium Of Russia's TMH and India's RVNL Is Lowest Bidder For Mega Project

Russian giant TMH in partnership with RVNL has emerged as the lowest bidder for the mega project involving manufacturing 200 Vande Bharat trains followed by BHEL-Titagarh as the second lowest bidder in the much awaited bidding outcome.

In a keenly observed bidding, TMH-RVNL consortium quoted Rs 120 crore for making the 16-coach Vande Bharat train with Sleeper facility much below the anticipated price of Rs 130 cr.

BHEL-Titagarh group has submitted the price at Rs 139 crore and became the second lowest bidder for the high value project worth over Rs 40,000 crore.

Now the Railways would ask the second lowest bidder to lower its quotation price to Rs 120 crore as stated in the tender document.

While the lowest bidder would be given a contract for making 120 Vande Bharat trains at ICF Chennai, the second lowest would be offered an order for manufacture of 80 semi-high speed trains at Latur.

All five major rolling stock companies including Alstom, Siemens, Medha and Russian TMH had qualified after technical evaluation to participate in the financial bid for manufacturing 200 Vande Bharat trains.

The financial bid was opened on Wednesday (1 March) and the TMH-RVNL became the lowest bidder beating Alstom, Medha and Siemens in the race.

BEML-SIEMENS had quoted Rs 145 crore, Alstom quoted Rs 164 crore and Medha had put the price at Rs 165 crore in the financial bid.

While Alstom had entered the race alone, other four players had formed consortiums.

Medha joined hands with Straddler, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) with Titagarh Wagon, TMH (Russian company) with Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), a railway PSU, and Siemens with BEML to form the consortiums for bidding for the Rs 46,000 crore project.

All had submitted the bids and the Railways had opened the two-packet bids on November 30 last year.

While the Railways has already awarded a contract for 102 Vande Bharat trains, 75 Vande Bharat trains will have seating facility and rest would be provided Sleeper facility.

There is a provision for increasing the number of coaches to 20 in the 16-coach Vande Bharat train if the demand grows for a particular section.

Since the selected bidders will be also given responsibility to maintain the semi-high speed trains for 35 years, the project entails expenditure of Rs 20,000 crore for maintenance.

The design for sleeper is different from the existing Vande Bharat trains as there would be three toilets in each coach instead of two now. The water tank would be 2,000 litre capacity as against 1,880 litre in the existing Vande Bharat train.

Berth pattern would be changed to make it sleeper class with arrangement for curtains, pantry cars and matching lighting system.

It would take about 24 months to produce the first prototype after the award of the contract.