Dineshchandra R Agrawal Infracon Pvt Ltd or DRA Infracon has won the bid to develop a 121 km long, Rs 4,900 crore highway project in Assam on Build, Operate and Transfer – Toll model by offering to build the highway without any grant from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
The other contenders for the Guwahati Ring Road comprising three sections, were a joint venture between Adani Group and Ashoka Buildcon which sought a grant of Rs 135 crore while state-owned Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd asked for Rs 370 crore from NHAI to develop the highway, the first in the Northeast, officials said.“DRA Infracon was the lowest bidder for the project,” said a government official.
This is one of the first highway projects to be awarded by NHAI on BOT Toll model in over a decade after the country’s highway development agency revived this model for highway development by refining the model concession document to make the projects attractive to investors.
Following the financial stress faced by construction contractors that were involved in developing highway projects on BOT Toll model more than a decade ago, the NHAI had switched to the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) for building highway stretches on public-private-partnership (PPP) mode.
