The Indian Railways has disqualified the bid of a consortium of a Chinese company and an Indian firm for the manufacturing of 44 Vande Bharat trainsets costing nearly ₹ 1,800 crores.

Now there are only two valid bids of BHEL and Medha Servo Drives. Medha, which had got the contract for the manufacturing for the first two such trains, has quoted the lowest bid, sources said.

Only three players had put the bid for the big contract including the CRRC-Pioneer Electric India, a joint venture between Beijing based CRRC Yongji Electric Ltd and India’s Pioneer Fil-Med Ltd, which has its plant in Haryana.

It took almost four weeks for the railways to evaluate the tenders and take the final call. Railway officials had earlier said that the tender committee would take the decision on the validity of bids.

Before applying for the train set procurement tender, the CRRC-Pioneer Electric India had applied for registration here after it was made mandatory for companies with beneficial ownership in countries sharing land borders with India to get registered for participating in public procurement contracts.