Key Points

“Siemens won the tender as it was the lowest bidder with a highly competitive price,” an official of the ministry said.

Responding to questions being raised on the 2022 bidding process, involving the manufacturing of locomotives in Dahod, the Ministry said the tender was executed transparently. 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, the Ministry of Railways further stated.

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, the official statement said.

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 the rules and procedures that Indian Railways has always followed.

The Ministry further stated that there is no role for the Minister of Railways in the tender evaluation process. From 2016 onwards, Railway Ministers ceased to approve tenders. All approvals are handled by empowered Railway Board Members and zonal units, ensuring complete institutional transparency, neutrality and delegation of power. Moreover, both Siemens and Alstom have been working with Indian Railways for many decades.

Over the past two decades, Indian Railways has been moving to life cycle cost-based procurements so that the reliability of products increases and thereby the safety of passengers increases, the statement said.

As per the current manufacturing process, about 89 per cent of the components used in the manufacture of Dahod locomotives are made in India. The railway component manufacturing ecosystem is rapidly growing in India.

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, the statement explained.

The locomotives manufactured at Dahod will be maintained at four depots - Visakhapatnam, Raipur, Kharagpur, and Pune, the statement added.

- IANS