New Delhi, Jun 23 (PTI) The Congress on Monday raised questions over the process by which a contract for manufacturing 9,000 horsepower locomotives was awarded to Siemens by the Indian Railways, a charge rejected by the ministry as "misleading".
The opposition party also demanded a parliamentary inquiry into the contract.
In 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced Dahod's resurgence as a railway manufacturing powerhouse, which materialised with the setting up of a world-class facility in partnership with Siemens India through a transparent tendering process, the Railways Ministry had said last month.
Addressing a press conference, Congress leader Brijendra Singh raised a question of conflict of interest, citing that Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had been a vice president of Siemens India in the past.
"What sounds more concerning is that the current Union Railway Minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has been a vice president of Siemens India in the past. He was earlier employed by both Siemens and GE Transportation, companies which have vested interests in India's railway sector," Singh said.
"This raises a direct question of conflict of interest, especially since Siemens secured its largest-ever contract in India under his tenure as Railway Minister. Is this a coincidence, or a clear case of conflict of interest?" he said, referring to the award of the Rs 26,000 crore contract.
When the contract was announced in December 2022, the government affirmed that the locomotives would be manufactured at the factory of Indian Railways in Gujarat's Dahod, Singh said.
The government claimed that the Dahod would become a hub of advanced engineering, providing a number of jobs. However, the series of events since then has raised questions of transparency and conflict of interest, the Congress leader said.
The story of Dahod highlights a broader pattern under this government, where headlines are prioritised over outcomes, and where foreign corporations are favoured at the cost of domestic capacity-building, he alleged.
"This is not 'Make in India'. This is 'Assemble in India', under foreign control," he said.
Rebutting the claims, the Railways Ministry said that the Congress made various "misleading" allegations against Indian Railways and the production of 9,000 HP electric locomotives at Dahod.
The ministry said the tender for manufacturing and maintaining 9,000 HP electric locomotives was executed in a transparent manner.
"There are two electric locomotive manufacturers globally who have the capability to design and manufacture 9000 HP electric locomotives -- Alstom and Siemens -- both of them participated in the tender... The tender was evaluated by a team of technical and financial experts, in line with the processes that Indian railways has always followed," it said.
In technical evaluation, both Alstom and Siemens were equally placed and in the financial bid, the bidder with the lowest price was awarded the contract, the ministry said.
It further said the price discovered through this transparent method is highly competitive.
"The contract is as per the tender documents. There is no change in the tender conditions... The entire tender process was executed by the teams of officers who are technically and financially competent to handle such matters as per rules," the ministry said.
"There is no question of conflict of interest because the process was followed as per rules and procedures that Indian Railways has always followed. There is no involvement of the Minister of Railways in the tender evaluation process. Moreover, both Siemens and Alstom have been working with Indian Railways for many decades," it said.
The ministry also said that over the past two decades, Indian Railways has been moving to life cycle cost based procurements so that reliability of products increases and thereby safety of passengers increases.
As per the current manufacturing process, about 89 per cent of the components used in manufacture of Dahod locomotives are made in India, it said.
"Railway component manufacturing ecosystem is rapidly growing in India. A locomotive is a very complex machine and its components are equally complex. They are manufactured at various locations in India and supplied to various locomotive manufacturers.
"Very few countries in the world can claim the level of manufacturing components that India has been able to achieve because of the thrust given to manufacturing in the last decade," the ministry said.
The locomotives manufactured at Dahod will be maintained at four depots -- Visakhapatnam, Raipur, Kharagpur, and Pune, it said.