RailEnquiry

The Rs8,500 crore monorail transit system for the city, which is the chief minister’s pet project, gathered steam on Tuesday with the state government finalising the bid documents submitted by various developers. The qualifiers for the next stage of process are likely to be named soon.The ‘monorail empowered committee’ that comprises chief secretary, transport secretary and secretaries of various departments met at the Secretariat and discussed the recommendations given by the Hyderabad-based advisory consultant who was appointed to evaluate the tender documents submitted by the bidders.“The discussions were fruitful and the government will come up with a positive announcement in a day or two. Subsequently the next stage of the bidding process (request for proposals) will be started soon” sources in the government told DC on Tuesday.Earlier, on March 20, the last date for submission of bids for RFQ (request for qualifying for monorail), around 10 firms had submitted tenders for the project, which were evaluated by the consultant and sent to the government for approval. Malaysian firm, Scomi international, players from Spain (Kafe India), Japan (Hitachi) and China took part in the tendering process.In the first phase of the 57-km-long network work would begin on three elevated corridors — Vandalur to Velachery; Poonamallee to Kathipara; and Poonamallee to Vadapalani.