New Delhi, Jun 23 (PTI) The tender for manufacturing and maintaining 9,000 HP electric locomotives was executed transparently, the Railway Ministry said on Monday, refuting as “misleading” allegations by the Congress that undue favour was done to Siemens in awarding the contract.
The ministry’s statement comes after the Congress held a press conference on Monday over the issue.
“In the press conference, various misleading allegations were made against Indian Railways and the production of 9000 HP electric locomotives at Dahod,” Dilip Kumar, Executive Director, Information and Publicity, Railway Board, said.
While presenting facts of the tender process, Kumar said that Alstom and Siemens are two electric locomotive manufacturers globally which can design and manufacture 9000 HP electric locomotives and both participated in the tender.
“The tender was evaluated by a team of technical and financial experts, in line with the processes that Indian Railways has always followed. In the technical evaluation, both Alstom and Siemens were equally placed. In the financial bid, the bidder with the lowest price was awarded the contract,” Kumar said.
He added, “The price discovered through this transparent method is highly competitive. The contract is as per the tender documents. There is no change in the tender conditions.” Addressing the press conference, Congress leader Brijendra Singh raised a question of conflict of interest, citing that Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had been a vice president of Siemens India in the past.
Dismissing any possibility of a conflict of interest, Kumar stated that the entire tender process was executed by the teams of officers who are technically and financially competent to handle such matters as per the rules.
“There is no question of conflict of interest because the process was followed as per rules and procedures that Indian Railways has always followed. There is no involvement of the Minister of Railways in the tender evaluation process. Moreover, both Siemens and Alstom have been working with Indian Railways for many decades,” Kumar said.
Over the past two decades, Indian Railways has been moving to life cycle cost-based procurements so that reliability of products increases and thereby safety of passengers increases, he added.
The Railway Ministry has maintained that as per the current manufacturing process, about 89 per cent of the components used in the manufacture of Dahod locomotives are made in India.
According to the ministry, the railway component manufacturing ecosystem is rapidly growing in India. Officials said that a locomotive is a very complex machine and its components are equally complex.
“They are manufactured at various locations in India and supplied to various locomotive manufacturers. Very few countries in the world can claim the level of manufacturing components that India has been able to achieve because of the thrust given to manufacturing in the last decade,” Kumar said.
He added, “The locomotives manufactured at Dahod will be maintained at four depots — Visakhapatnam, Raipur, Kharagpur, and Pune.” PTI JP KVK KVK
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