GUWAHATI: Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, on Wednesday, August 19, said that his ministry would review the existing provisions governing subcontracting of highway works to ensure that contractual requirements are strictly adhered to and that responsibility for quality and timely execution remains clearly with the principal contractor.
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Addressing the 4th edition of FICCI's Tunnels and Bridges Conference, Minister Gadkari said the ministry was already assessing contractors on the basis of their performance and had begun extending the exercise to consultants preparing Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), with tender eligibility proposed to be linked to such performance assessments.
"Quality is the first priority, and cost comes after quality," he said.
The Minister cited instances of contracts being awarded substantially below the estimated cost and subsequently being subcontracted through multiple layers, with each intermediary retaining a margin. He said that Goods and Services Tax (GST) records could help trace such chains of subcontracting and identify instances where contractual requirements may have been breached.
The ministry is preparing tunnel tenders worth ₹2 lakh crore to ₹2.5 lakh crore. The minister encouraged the industry to lead on domestic manufacture of tunnel boring machines, whose capital cost he identified as a binding constraint, and to convene a technical session on ultra-high performance concrete.