Rejected A Reliance Tender As State Minister, Saved Rs 2,000 Crore: Nitin Gadkari

"Reliance had quoted Rs 3,600 crore. We rejected it and completed the project through the MSRDC at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore," Nitin Gadkari said.

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari today told investors not to worry about returns on investments in infrastructure projects or them getting stalled. The minister for road transport and highways was speaking at the "National Conference on Investment Opportunities in Highway, Transport, and Logistics" in Mumbai.

"Today's conference in Mumbai reminds me of my time as state minister in 1995, when I rejected a tender by Reliance for the Mumbai-Pune express highway. Dhirubhai (Ambani) was there at that time, and he was very upset with me. My chief minister was also upset and so was Balasaheb Thackeray. They asked me why did you do it? I said we will raise money from the public for that project and other projects like Bandra-Worli Sea link; everyone was laughing at me," Mr Gadkari told the gathering.

"Manohar Joshi (then chief minister of Maharashtra) told me to do what I was saying I could do. We set up the MSRDC (Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation). At that time, I was the founder chairman. We went to the chambers of commerce to make presentations with laptop computers and get people to invest. Laptop computers were new at that time. I remembered this because at that time we went to investors, now investors come to us," Mr Gadkari added.

Talking about the returns from monetising infrastructure projects, the minister said, "I want to share this example to talk about investor confidence. Reliance had quoted Rs 3,600 crore. We rejected it and completed the project through the MSRDC at a cost of Rs 1,600 crore. We saved Rs 2,000 crore. The Maharashtra Government monetised the project and we received Rs 3,000 crore. We monetised it again a year and a half ago and the Maharashtra government got Rs 8,000 crore. So, you can see that a Rs 1,600 crore road was once monetised for Rs 3,000 crore and the second time for Rs 8,000 crore. So, in infrastructure projects, stop worrying about internal rate of return and economic viability."