Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis declared yesterday that his government has selected infrastructure company Larsen & Toubro (L&T) for constructing the much-touted Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj memorial off Mumbai’s coast.
L&T’s revised tender of Rs. 2,500 cr was accepted by the government in the second round of bidding. The company had previously quoted Rs. 3,826 cr as its bid price, but this was reduced by Rs. 1,326 cr to meet the government’s price requirements.
Maharashtra government had first initiated the bidding process for this massive project two years ago when it had received bids from three companies, namely, L&T, Reliance Infrastructure and Afcons Infrastructure. L&T finally bagged the tender after negotiations with the government, while R-Infra had lost out in the technical competition round and Afcons Infra had bid around Rs. 4,799 cr for it.
A letter of intent has been issued to L&T by the government for constructing this statue on an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) model. The company said it plans to start construction in May, before this year’s monsoon season sets in.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had officially launched this project last year by laying its foundation stone just 1.5 km off Mumbai’s sea shore. Once completed, the statue of Maratha warrior king Shivaji Maharaj will be almost two times bigger than New York’s famous Statue of Liberty, making it the biggest of its kind in the world.