DRA Begins Work for Ahmedabad Metro’s Thaltej Gam Station

Dineshchandra R. Agrawal Infracon Pvt. Ltd. and its subcontractor IB Infrastructure on Thursday conducted a bhoomi puja to launch construction work on the long pending 900 meter Thaltej to Thaltej Gam section of Ahmedabad Metro’s 20.737 km Line-1.

Construction work for this elevated section (Pier 1 to Pier 59) including Thaltej Gam Station of the 39.259 km Phase 1 project‘s Reach-2 was originally awarded in January 2017 to Tata Projects Ltd – China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (TPL-CCECC) JV with a value of Rs 721 crore.

Work on it wasn’t able to start due to land acquisition issues involving around 350 residential properties, and this led to a legal battle between TPL-CCECC and Gujarat Metro Rail Corporation (GMRC) in 2019-2020, with TPL-CCECC claiming Rs 140 crore for the underutilization of its resources.

GMRC then initiated a change in the alignment of the viaduct and design of Thaltej Gam Station to reduce the number of properties to be acquired. In September 2020, it then invited bids for its construction with a deadline of 18 months. In December, DRA Infracon emerged as the lowest bidder beating Ranjit Buildcon and Sabhav Engineering.

Here are some snaps from the event. IB Infrastructure has been subcontracted to perform 1200 mm initial pile load testing. They’re the same firm subcontracted by NCC for Patna Metro’s piling work.

The Thaltej – Thaltej Gam section will obviously go on to become the last section of Line-1 and Phase 1 to open up, which I reckon would happen towards the end of 2023. Good thing is that it’s not located in the middle of the line (like Trilokpuri in Delhi or Tin Factory in Bangalore), otherwise it would have affected the start of operations on other completed sections.

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– TMRG