Indian Railways Floats Revised Tender For Procuring 44 Vande Bharat Trains, Mandates 75 Per Cent Local Content

In line with the government's push for 'Make in India' to build an 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', the Indian Railways has floated a revised tender for 44 semi-high speed Vande Bharat train sets, with mandatory 75 per cent of local content, reports Livemint.

This comes after the Indian Railways had cancelled the previous tender on 21 August. The previous tender had a mandatory requirement for much lower 50 per cent indigenous content and received bids from six applicants, which included China-based CRRC Pioneer Electric.

A pre-bidding conference has been scheduled for 29 September, following which the bids of the new tender will be opened on 17 November.

The 44 train sets will be manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai, Rail Coach Factory (RCF) in Kapurthala, and the Modern Coach Factory (MCF) in Raebareli. This gains significance as the first two Vande Bharat train sets which are already in service were manufactured by the ICF alone.

Tentatively, 24 train sets (16 car rakes) have been allotted to ICF and 10 each to MCF and RCF respectively.

According to the latest tender's document, only Class-I local supplier will be eligible for bidding.

Vande Bharat trains, also popularly known as Train 18 are indigenous electric multiple units manufactured by the Chennai-based ICF in just 18 months in 2018.