Indian Railways Introduces A Fresh Tendering System for Train 18

New Delhi (Urban Transport News): Indian Railways, which is facing the allegations of favouritism in the tendering process of the first ‘Make in India’ engine-less semi high-speed Train 18, has introduced a fresh tendering system for giving all bidders a level playing field and ensuring transparency.

Earlier, the Indian Railways has scrapped the all existing tenders and the manufacturing process for the third Train 18 set would go according to the new tendering process.

As the Railway has already decided another route of the Train 18 set and is likely to launch the operational journey of second Vande Bharat Express in next month on the Delhi-Katra route.

According to the new tendering process, the bidders will have a three month time to apply for bids instead of the three weeks. While issuing a tender, the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) as well as other production units now required to follow the guidelines of Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO). The RDSO functions as a technical adviser and consultant to the railways. Earlier, the same was not followed by the ICF during manufacturing of first Train 18 set.

It is pertinent to mention here that the first rake of Train 18 (Vande Bharat Express) was manufactured in a record time of just 18 months at a cost of about Rs 97 crore.

However, the Ministry of railways received around 25 complaints from various vendors and multinational companies alleging that a domestic private firm was allegedly favoured in the procurement process for electrical equipment for the first train 18 set.

According to sources, total 18 companies were in the fray for supplying electrical equipment during the bidding process for the first rake. Of which, 8 were Indian firms. However, only one consortium could make it on the last day of the tender submission, February 6, 2018, due to certain pre-bidding conditions.

Indian Railways has stopped manufacturing of the third train 18 set with a vigilance enquiry at the Integral Coach Factory underway.

To follow the new tendering process not only the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, but the Modern Coach Factory, Rae Bareli, also cancelled all tenders pertaining to Vande Bharat Express type of rakes, suburban trains such as Electric Multiple Units (EMU), Diesel Electric Multiple Units (DEMU) and Mainline Electric Multiple Units (MEMU) as well.

A senior railway official said,

We want to offer a level playing field to all suppliers to participate in the making of these trains which will not only have high quality but (will be produced with) much greater transparency.

The Railway Board in a recent meeting with top officials and leading manufacturers of propulsion systems discussed the new timelines to invite wider participation.

“The Board met train set manufacturers and informed them that train sets could only be procured from them if the demand exceeds the manufacturing capacity of railways’ production units”, said a railway official, as quoted by ET.

According to the plan, the ICF has been sanctioned to manufacture 40 more train 18 sets over the next three years. Out of 10 in 2019-20 and 15 each in the next two years.

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Source: UT

Image Courtesy:Zee Business

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