Changed criteria for Madhepura loco unit

Days before the list of short-listed firms for building the Rs 1,293 crore electric locomotive factory at Madhepura in Bihar will be made public, representations alleging that the qualifying criteria in the project Request for Qualification (RFQ) were altered to block new entrants and to promote cartelisation have been received by railways minister Mallikarjun Kharge.

Days before the list of short-listed firms for building the Rs 1,293 crore electric locomotive factory at Madhepura in Bihar will be made public, representations alleging that the qualifying criteria in the project Request for Qualification (RFQ) were altered to block new entrants and to promote cartelisation have been received by railways minister Mallikarjun Kharge.

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Big players including Bombardier, Siemens, Alstom and General Electric (GE) have pitched in with bids for the PPP project, besides the CSR Corporation and the CNR Corporation of China.

The two Chinese firms are likely to be eliminated in the short-listing process, as they do not fulfill the criteria of having exported Insular Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) locomotives to three countries in the last five years.

“This clause is unnecessary and unfair”, a CSR Corporation representative said.

In his June 20 letter to the railways minister, Lok Sabha MP Om Prakash Yadav alleged that “the RFQ clauses would restrict participation in favour of certain companies and by-passing the process of fair competition. This will cause a loss of thousands of crores to the exchequer of our poor nation”.