4 rounds of bids in 5 years: Why a 35-km stretch continues to hold up Delhi-Mumbai Expressway

The ambitious 1,386-km Delhi-Mumbai Expressway has hit a roadblock in Gujarat yet again, where the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is struggling to complete a small stretch of a mere 35.4 km in Valsad and Navsari districts. This comes after the NHAI had to issue a second call for the tender, which it had invited after terminating the last contractor, after the lowest bidder — Bhopal-based Bansal Construction Works Pvt Ltd — is learnt to have declined to accept the letter of award to begin the works at the project.

The company bid aggressively to quote over 10% less than the estimated project cost of Rs 1,476 crore, The Indian Express has learnt. Sources said after the contractor refused to take the project despite being L1, following which the authority forfeited their bank guarantee.

Following this, the authority issued the second call for bids on September 14, with submission deadline ending October 13. The delay in finding an appropriate contractor will push the project further behind schedule, which was revised upward to ensure its completion by June 30, 2028.

“In the first call, the Concessionaire did not accept the letter of award. They did not quote any reason for this. As a result, the bid security of Rs 14.76 crore was encashed as per provisions of the request for proposal. New bids have been invited and NHAI is making all efforts to complete the project expeditiously,” said a senior NHAI official. The official also said that to prevent aggressive bidding, the authority issued a circular on July 15 to take additional performance guarantees from the bidders.

Bansal Construction did not respond to the mailed queries.

In total, this is the fourth time that the authority has invited bids for package 8, which is the Jujuwa to Gandeva section of the expressway. The Pune contractor Roadway Solutions India Infra Ltd (RSIIL) was first awarded the stretch in 2021, under the Hybrid Annuity Mode (HAM). However, due to delays, the contract was terminated in March 2023, but eventually re-awarded to the same company in November 2023 under the Engineering, Procurement & Construction mode.

On December 17, 2025, The Indian Express had first reported how three small stretches in Gujarat — adding up to just 87 km, including Jujuwa-Gandeva — have ended up derailing the massive project being built at a cost of Rs 1.04 lakh crore. These stretches, falling on the Vadodara-Virar section of the expressway, are among the most delayed packages of the high-speed corridor.

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Acting on the report, NHAI terminated the package-8 con-tract again and invited fresh bids on January 23 for the section’s balance work, which has only seen 4.85% completion till date.

The records show that a total of nine companies were evaluated at the technical stage and four were rejected or declared non-responsive, including RSIIL. Apart from Bansal Constructions, Ashoka Buildcon Ltd, Ceigall India Ltd, G R Infraprojects Ltd, and Kalthia Engineering and Construction Ltd participated in the financial bidding. The second lowest bidder was Ceigall India that had quoted Rs 1,581 crore for the project.

RSIIL had challenged the highway authority’s two technical evaluation results dated June 25 and July 31 in the Delhi High Court after its bid was declared “non-responsive”. In an order dated July 3, the court had directed NHAI to evaluate the technical bid after duly considering RSIIL’s provisional completion certificate (PCC).

Later, in another order dated August 21, where RSIIL had again challenged NHAI’s results to declare it ‘Non-Responsive’ on the ground that it fails to meet the additional work criteria (Bridges), the court rejected the contractor’s pleas, finding it without merit.

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Apart from package-8, NHAI had terminated the contract of package-9 as well, which is a 26.6-km section from Karvad to Jujuwa in Valsad, on account of the contractor’s poor performance. This stretch is around 22% complete to date. The authority invited bids on May 27 with estimated cost of Rs. 874 crore for the completion of balance work, with submission deadline ending July 14. The technical bid of this stretch is in progress.

The 24.6 km package-10 (Talasari to Karwad) is also running much behind schedule, with only 36.23% physical progress so far, where NHAI had issued an intention to terminate notice to the concessionaire on account of poor performance.

Upon completion of all sections, the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway is expected to reduce the distance from Delhi to Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai by 180 km. It will also reduce travel time by up to 50% to connected destinations. Connecting Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra in 53 packages, the project is set to become the longest access-controlled expressway upon completion. Of the total Rs 1,03,636 crore project cost, an expenditure of Rs 71,718 crore was incurred by December 2025.

The 246-km Delhi-Dausa-Lalsot stretch in Rajasthan was the first completed section, which was inaugurated on February 12, 2023. This was followed by the 87-km Vadodara-Bharuch stretch in Gujarat in February 2024. The 245-km Jhalwar-Ratlam-MP/Gujarat border was also opened to traffic.