The Indian Railways (IR) has reportedly decided to wind up the RFQ process to start work on modernising the New Delhi railway station on a PPP basis.

The second attempt at bidding process for the Rs 12,000 crore project has failed. The bank guarantee of Rs 25 lakh submitted by each of the seven bidders in March 2009 for the qualifying bids, were valid till 10 October 2009.

The IR had an option to extend the bank guarantee period through mutual discussions and keep the bidding process alive. However, the IR is unlikely to extend the date. As the project requires many approvals from the Delhi Development Authority, the IR has decided to get the approvals before it moves ahead to the bidding process for the project.

The consortium who had submitted bids for the New Delhi station modernisation are Tata Realty and Infrastructure and Grandi Stazioni SpA (Italy); L&T Transco; DB Realty and Deutsche Bahn (German Railways); Nishok Realty, Spanish Railway, Posmar Inversions, Yoman Infrastructure, Parnesh Real Estate; Morgan Stanley Infrastructure and VNR Rail Infrastructure; KMC Construction, China Railway 18th Bureau Group; GVK Developmental Projects, Leighton.

The first RFQ process was cancelled because there was confusion over the interpretation of the cross-ownership clause in the document. In the first half of 2008, the IR had received 13 bids for the project.

The project cost of Rs 9,000 crore, included mandatory capital expenditure, the real estate development for commercial purposes and interest during construction. The developer was supposed to enter into a long-term concession agreement of about 45 years with the IR.

For the technical consulting services of the station, Hong Kong based Terry Farrell had been appointed in 2007.

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