Suburban rail: Four firms submit bids for civil work of Kanaka Line

Four companies have submitted bids for the design and construction of the Bengaluru Suburban Railway Project's Corridor 4 (Kanaka Line).

The 46.88-km line will connect Rajanukunte in the far north to Heelalige in the far south via Baiyappanahalli and Yelahanka.

L&T Ltd, Afcons Infrastructure Ltd, INTARVO Technologies, and Dinesh Chandra R Agrawal Infracon Pvt Ltd participated in the tender called under the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) model. The bidders had to give separate lumpsum quotes for the Kanaka Line's 8.96-km elevated and 37.92-km at-grade sections, Rail Infrastructure Development Company (Karnataka), or K-RIDE, said in a statement on Tuesday.

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The tender committee will soon start the technical evaluation of the bids. Once the bidders pass this stage, financial bids will be opened, K-RIDE added.

This is the second of the suburban project's four lines where bids have opened. The civil contract for 25.02-km Corridor 2 (Sampige Line) was awarded last year to L&T, and groundwork has begun between Yeshwantpur and Chikkabanavar.

A senior K-RIDE official said the technical evaluation would take a month if all documents were in order. Financial bids will be opened thereafter. He exuded confidence that the contract would be awarded by the end of this year.

The deadline will be 30 months from the day the contract is awarded, he added.

Tenders for the construction of 19 stations for Corridor 4 will open in August, the official said.

This apart, K-RIDE expects to receive 193 acres of railway land for Corridor 4 by July-end. "We have submitted the land requirements to the Bengaluru railway division. Everything has been sorted out on that front. We expect the land in the next few days," the official said.

The agency has also kicked off the process to acquire private land for laying eight kilometres of tracks.

Physical and land adjustment surveys have been completed for the entire alignment, and only some paperwork is pending, according to the official.

The shifting of utility lines is also under way and will be nearly completed by the time the contract is awarded, the official explained.