Nine firms in race to redevelop 4 railways stations under PPP model

The railways has shortlisted nine companies for redeveloping four of its stations at Nagpur, Gwalior, Amritsar and Sabarmati as part of its plan of redeveloping railway stations under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

New Delhi: In a bid to give a swanky makeover to four Railway stations- Gwalior, Amritsar, Nagpur and Sabarmati, Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation Ltd (IRSDC) has shortlisted nine firms under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

The participating applicants are GR Infraprojects, Kalpataru Power Transmission, GMR Business and Consultancy, Anchorage Infrastructure, Monte Carlo, JKB Infrastructure + DMIA, Kalyan Toll and Cube Construction Engineering.

IRSDC had invited Request for Qualifications (RFQs) in December 2019 to redevelop these four Railway Stations and transform them into iconic city centres.

On June 26, the Railway PSU opened RFQ applicants in which at least 32 applications received from these 9 companies which showed interest. Out of these, 29 were selected on Thursday.

The total inductive cost for the redevelopment of the four stations is about Rs 1300 crore. Railways has allowed a total built-up area of 54 lakh square feet for commercial development.

"No land change and prior environmental clearance are required for these projects as these are Railway projects under Railway Act 1989," mentioned IRSDC in a statement.

"These four stations will be the first ones in the country to have the provision of predetermined user charges on passengers and visitors as one of the main revenue stream for concessionaire of the redeveloped stations," it further added.

Earlier, IRSDC was in talks with the Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC) and the World Bank to fund the ambitious Rs 1 trillion station redevelopment programme for 400 stations.

Last week, IRSDC also conducted a Round table conference on 'Attracting greater investments from the private sector for commercial development projects on Railway land'.