Biggies vie to bag Rs.190-bn e-way project

Infra building majors, including L&T, Reliance Infrastructure and Afcons, have joined the race for UP government‘s flagship Purvanchal Expressway project costing Rs.190 billion. In technical bidding stage, 12 companies viz. Reliance, PNC Infratech, NCC Limited (Formerly Nagarjuna Construction Company), L&T, BSCPL Infrastructure (formerly B Seenaiah & Company (Projects)), Sadbhav Engineering, Oriental Structural Engineers, Ashoka Buildcon, KNR Constructions, Apco Infratech, Gayatri Projects, Afcons Infrastructure have been found eligible for financial bids. The government has divided the project into 8 packages, for which separate developers would be selected through competitive bidding. The selected companies would be awarded the contract very shortly so that construction could start before the middle of this year. The mega project had already been delayed over sluggish land acquisition. The proposed 340 km expressway would traverse nine districts viz. Lucknow, Barabanki, Faizabad, Ambedkarnagar, Amethi, Sultanpur, Azamgarh, Mau and Ghazipur. Besides, the expressway would connect all important towns in its periphery including Varanasi, Ayodhya, Allahabad and Gorakhpur through link roads. The expressway would have a 3 km long runway at Kudebhar (Sultanpur) for the landing and take-off by IAF fighter planes during emergencies matching to the similar road infrastructure at Unnao district on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway.