Larsen and Toubro Infrastructure Development Projects, Leighton Welspun Contractors, Uniquest Infra Ventures, Reliance Infrastructure, have emerged as developers who can bid for largest national highway projects.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has recently circulated the annual qualification list for 2013 for 61 bidders, including five for which the results were withheld primarily for some lack of documents, said a NHAI source.

process

Under the annual pre-qualification method, NHAI vets the project costs for which a developer or a consortium can bid, based on their experience.

The process usually takes place once a year.

Though, NHAI has added a rider that it has based these qualification points based on documents submitted by developers and not “counter-verified”.

Gloomy year

Incidentally, 2012-13 was a gloomy year for the highway sector, with NHAI not getting a single bid for over Rs 16,000 crore worth of projects.

The highway body was able to award projects to develop less than 1,500 km. NHAI plans to award about 4,000 km of highways in current fiscal, subject to availability of requisite regulatory clearances.

The annual pre-qualification method was started two years ago, in a bid to increase speed and transparency in the bidding process.

Earlier, technical qualification of bidders was done for every project, and there used to be discrepancies in the technical scores assigned to same developers in different projects. Even CBI had ticked off NHAI in mid-2010 pointing out that many bidders were rejected at technical qualification stage on flimsy grounds, which led to limiting competition at the financial bids stage.

mamuni.das@thehindu.co.in

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