A three-member committee will take a call this weekend on finalising specifications for Kochi Metro’s coaches, based on the French firm Alstom’s request for making a few changes in the Rs 633-crore contract to supply 75 coaches for the project.
Addressing media persons here on Monday after a joint meeting of top officials of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL), DMRC’s Principal Adviser E. Sreedharan said that Alstom had agreed to deliver the first lot of metro coaches by January 2016, as against its initial commitment to provide them by mid-2016. “We thus hope to complete metro’s reach one – the 18-km-long Aluva-Maharaja’s College ground corridor by June 2016 (which was initially the deadline to commission the 25-km Aluva-Pettah metro corridor),” he said.
The members of the three-member committee that will meet in New Delhi on January 16 and 17 to finalise coach specifications are DMRC’s director (rolling stock) H.S. Anand; director (works) Jitender Tyagi (who is also KMRL director board member); and KMRL’s director (systems) Ved Mani Tiwari.
The DMRC had reportedly not issued the ‘manufacturing clearance’ to Alstom to begin making coaches, due to lack of convergence with the KMRL and Alstom on aspects like design, specifications and aesthetics.
Once the specifications are finalised, the approval for coaches will be given in three stages - preliminary, pre-final and final. The awarding of the bid to supply coaches suffered a delay following differences between the two metro agencies, primarily on the coach width.
Alstom won the bid in August last by quoting Rs.174 crore less than the bid estimate of Rs.856 crore.
