Bidding for New Delhi railway station's redevelopment scrapped

Railway ministry's ambitious project of transforming New Delhi station into a world class one has fallen flat on its face what with the civic authorities refusing permission for the mega project.

With this, the second bidding process for the station's redevelopment has also collapsed, informed sources in the railway ministry said.

"In the absence of clearance from the civic authorities, the request for qualification (RFQ) bids sought 10 months ago for all practical purpose stands cancelled," the sources said.

The objections from the NDMC, MCD, DDA and Delhi Traffic police were basically related to traffic given the station's close proximity to Connaught Place, parking and sewerage problems, they said.

The world class station would have come over 86 hectares of land at an estimated cost of Rs9,000 crore on PPP mode complete with a shopping complex, separate entry and exit points and all other modern amenities.

However, they said that the plan for other stations which the railways have earmarked for transformation into world class ones would go ahead.

Recently an expert committee on railways headed by Amit Mitra had suggested "optimal utilisation of space with small inputs in the station to raise it to world class standards".

Now, it remains to be seen whether railways accept the proposal and go for the station's development at a much smaller scale.

A senior NDMC official said, "The traffic around Connaught Place runs bumper to bumper, and if commercial activities at the station were to be allowed, it could have led to an uncontrollable situation in the area."

As such, the station is handling over seven lakh people and 700 trains every day, stretching the infrastructure in and around the station complex to its limit, said the official.

RITES, a railway PSU, had also conducted a survey on the traffic situation at Connaught Place, and the possible impact on it after the the transformation.

A senior railway official said unless the master plan gets clearnace, no bidders will show interest in the project.

Railways had invited RFQ for the project last year which was cancelled due to the cross holdings of shares by the bidders.

The project attracted many national and foreign firms such as Larsen and Toubro, DLF, Emaar-MGF, Reliance Infrastructure, Maytas Infra, Indiabulls Real Estate, GVK, Mitsui, Leighton, China Railways 18th Bureau Group and Deutsche Bahn.

This time too, about seven players had shown interest in the RFQ. But now they have also developed cold feet, an official said.