Afcons Wins Rs 3,469 Crore for Jewar Link Expressway and Lucknow Metro Underground

Afcons Infrastructure has turned two Uttar Pradesh bids into signed work worth about Rs 3,469 crore: a 24.5 km stretch of the Jewar Link Expressway and the underground section of Lucknow Metro Phase-1B. For anyone who rents out earthmoving, piling or lifting plant in western UP or around Lucknow, these are the two packages where hire enquiries will start, and they need very different fleets.

What Afcons disclosed

The Shapoorji Pallonji group contractor filed its press release with BSE on Thursday evening, and InvestyWise carried the same figures soon after. Both packages were already on our radar at an earlier stage. The UP cabinet picked Afcons for one of the two Jewar packages on 27 October, without package values. The Lucknow job was an L1 result from 5 October. Bid-stage reports gave a 6.7 km length and Rs 1,632 crore including GST, which is the same Rs 1,383.30 crore bid with 18% added. The award release gives 6.52 km, and that is the figure to use.

Which machines this work needs

Start with the expressway. Rs 2,086 crore over 24.5 km works out to about Rs 85 crore a km before GST. That is well above the Rs 54 crore a km average we worked out across all seven UP link packages, and above the Rs 71 crore a km of Dilip Buildcon’s elevated corridor in Solapur. On a road that is not elevated, a rate like that usually means a heavy structure count. That fits what we said when the Jewar link was sanctioned in August: interchanges, bridges and rail crossings packed into a short corridor. Expect piling rigs, batching plants and mobile and crawler cranes to matter as much as the usual fill train of excavators, tippers, dozers, graders and soil compactors. Our road construction equipment guide lists the full train.

Lucknow is a different job. The release does not say how the tunnels will be bored, so the face fleet is unknown. The surface work is easier to predict. Underground stations in a dense city are usually built as walled boxes. That means diaphragm-wall grabs and piling rigs first, then excavators and clamshells digging inside the walls, cranes over the shafts and a steady run of tippers taking spoil out, often at night. Seven stations on 6.52 km means a station box roughly every kilometre. That is the work behind the Rs 212 crore a km rate.

A firm of Afcons’ size brings its own core plant. The opening for owners is in sub-contracted earthwork, spoil haulage, crane hire and compaction. Two practical limits apply. The Jewar stretch sits in NCR districts, where winter GRAP curbs can pause earthwork. Lucknow’s city streets cap machine size. Expect compact and mid-size machines there, not 30-tonne crawlers.

FAQ

What contracts did Afcons win on 29 October 2026?

Two EPC jobs in Uttar Pradesh worth nearly Rs 3,469 crore: about Rs 2,086 crore (ex-GST) from UPEIDA for 24.5 km of the Jewar Link Expressway, and about Rs 1,383 crore from UPMRC for a 6.52 km underground section of Lucknow Metro Phase-1B.

Is the Lucknow Metro job 6.52 km or 6.7 km?

Bid-stage reports in October said about 6.7 km. The award release Afcons filed with BSE says 6.52 km with seven underground stations, and the filing is the better source.

Which machines will the Jewar Link Expressway need?

The fill train (excavators, tippers, dozers, graders, soil compactors) for the six-lane greenfield road, plus piling rigs, batching plants and cranes for the structures that the high per-km rate points to.

Related on DesiMachines: UP’s seven link expressway packages and the contractors picked for them

Source: Afcons Infrastructure press release

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