The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), for the second time on January 25, 2017, extended the deadline for submitting bids for the Navi Mumbai Airport to February 13, as it received only one bid from the GVK-led Mumbai International Airport.
“We received only a single bid from GVK (which anyway has the first right of refusal, being the operator of the Mumbai airport) for the RFQ (request for qualification). Therefore, we have given a further extension to all the three bidders, to submit their bids, till February 13, 2017. This is the last extension,” a Cidco official said.
The airport project has been in the work for over a decade, with land acquisition being the main hurdle.
CIDCO, which is the nodal agency for the over Rs 16,000-crore international airport project, had short-listed four consortia – GMR, GVK, Hiranandani Group and Tata Realty. However, three of them – GMR Group that operates the Delhi and Hyderabad airports, Hiranandani Group and the Tatas, opted out of the bidding process ahead of the first deadline on January 9, 2017, citing project risk and onerous bid conditions, leaving the GVK Group as the single bidder for the ambitious project.
“Even after this extension, if we still get no response from others, we will refer to the project management committee headed by Maharashtra chief secretary Swadheen Kshatriya, which will then take a final decision,” the official said. In February 2016, CIDCO had invited RFQ and the deadline for submissions was extended several times. It was first extended to July 30, then September 2 and October 31, 2016. Finally, after another extension, the deadline ended on December 10, 2016.
See also: Phase I of Navi Mumbai Airport to take off by 2019
The project requires around 2,268 hectares, of which 1,160 hectares would be utilised for aeronautical purposes.
Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had given an ambitious target of commissioning the work, before the 2019 Maharashtra elections. However, the project management committee recently indicated that the project would not be ready before mid-2020.
The airport is designed to serve 10 million passengers per annum in its first phase and 60 million, upon completion of the second phase.
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