Vaishali Ganga Water Supply Scheme Cleared: Bihar Adds Munger Water and Supaul Grid Works

Bihar’s cabinet cleared Rs 1,412.65 crore of water and power works on Monday, 12 October. Most of it goes to two surface-water drinking schemes and a new grid substation. For anyone who owns or rents out backhoe loaders, compact excavators and compaction kit in north and east Bihar, this is a few years of trench work in villages, not one big earthmoving job.

What Bihar’s cabinet approved

The sitting, chaired by Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, cleared 23 agenda items. Prabhat Khabar and Deshaj Times both itemised the four works above, and their figures match exactly. News4Nation and LiveCities carried the Vaishali scheme separately, with the same 72 MLD, 36 panchayats and 493 wards. News4Nation names the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) as the implementing department. No contractor, tender date or completion deadline has been announced for any of the four.

What it means for buyers

Start with the per-ward cost. Vaishali comes to about Rs 1.03 crore per ward, and that already includes five years of running the plant. Munger works out to about Rs 1.58 crore per ward. Neither number buys much heavy iron per site. Most of the money goes to pipe, the treatment plant, pumps and the intake. The machine work is spread across hundreds of short pipe runs through villages.

That suits a backhoe loader fleet, with 2 to 8 tonne excavators on the tighter lanes and plate compactors or small rollers to reinstate the roads behind them. The intake on the Ganga and the treatment plant are the only sustained single-site jobs. They typically need well-sinking, a crawler crane, a batching plant and transit mixers, and the river work has to fit into the November to May lean-flow window.

Munger costs about 1.8 times more per MLD than Vaishali (Rs 12.7 crore against Rs 7.04 crore). The reports don’t say whether Munger’s figure includes operation and maintenance, so treat that gap as indicative only. A smaller plant spreads its fixed intake and treatment costs over fewer litres, and that alone could explain much of it.

Supaul is the other kind of job. A substation needs one graded, compacted platform, which means a dozer, a grader and soil compactors working at one site for months. The 220 kV and 132 kV lines are scattered tower pits. The cabinet note doesn’t give line lengths or say whether the yard will be air-insulated or gas-insulated, so the size of the platform is still unknown.

Our take: both water notes say the schemes will “strengthen” supply in these wards, which suggests some ward networks already exist. If so, the trenching will be mains and interconnections rather than full new grids. That favours hiring over buying for most contractors who win a package here. A new pipeline and water supply fleet is hard to justify on Rs 1 crore of work per ward.

FAQ

How big is the Vaishali Ganga water supply scheme?

Rs 506.71 crore for a 72 MLD multi-village scheme. It covers 36 panchayats and 493 wards in the Mahua and Chehrakalan blocks, and the cost includes five years of operation and maintenance.

Has a contractor been picked for these works?

No. The 12 October cabinet decision is a sanction. No tender, contractor or completion date had been announced when we published.

Which machines will these projects need most?

Backhoe loaders, compact excavators and small compactors for the pipe networks. The intakes, treatment plants and Supaul substation will need cranes, batching plants, dozers and graders at single sites.

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Source: Prabhat Khabar