Road repairs on hold in Mumbai

The Brihamumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is a dilemma whether it should award major road repair works in the city to a blacklisted contractor. As a result, major road repairs in south Mumbai have been put on hold. RPS Infraprojects (formerly RP Shah), a company blacklisted by the building proposal department in 2010, has submitted the lowest bid for a basket of projects estimated to cost Rs 275 crore.

It has bid with Prakash Engineering and Supreme Infra. The contract is part of a Rs 530-crore bouquet of road repair and construction projects in south Mumbai. It entails concretising and asphalting over 65 km of roads in Churchgate, Fort, Marine Drive, Dadar, Worli and other areas.

About 129 roads in south Mumbai would be re-laid, including 27 major ones that will be concretised and 102 small and arterial ones that will be asphalted. The projects were to be awarded last year after a standard tendering procedure. The process, which included a final scrutiny of the lowest bidders, was completed earlier this month but the projects are yet to be awarded.

The civic body is seeking legal opinion on whether a contractor blacklisted by one department can be allowed to take up work tendered by other departments. RPS Infraprojects was blacklisted for poor quality work in a school building and served a show-cause notice for hiding information while bidding for road projects in 2011.