Company with Chinese partner among 6 bidders for Vande Bharat train project

Amid the call for boycotting Chinese products and the government removing Chinese companies from projects, one Chinese joint venture company is among the six bidders for the global tender of Indian Railways for its semi-high speed indigenous Vande Bharat project, Railways officials revealed on Friday.

“We have got bids from six players for the train set tender,” said Vinod Kumar Yadav, chairman of the Railway Board. CRRC Pioneer Electric (India) Private Limited is one of the six contenders for the tender to procure propulsion systems for 44 trains to function as the Vande Bharat Express also known Train 18.

The company is a joint venture of the Chinese firm CRRC Corporation Ltd with a Gurugram-based company, according to its website. The interest of the Chinese company for these train sets comes in the backdrop of a bitter faceoff between India and China in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh and following dispute that has continued for months.

The other contenders are Delhi-based Bharat Heavy Electricals limited (BHEL), Bharat Industries from Sangrur, Navi Mumbai-based Powernetics Equipment Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad-based Medha Group, Electrowaves Electronic Pvt Ltd based in Parwanoo.

It is the third such tender floated for the Vande Bharat trains under the Make in India initiative. Officials have said the present tender is worth over Rs 1,500 crore.

Previously, Indian Railways had cancelled a Rs 471-crore project of signalling and telecommunication work for a stretch of 417-km on the Kanpur-Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) section by a Chinese company. It had also scrapped a tender for thermal screening cameras after Indian vendors complained of the bid document favouring the Chinese.