The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s Recreation Committee has approved a 10-year contract for operating and maintaining the Kankaria Lakefront toy train with the existing agency, prompting questions over the length of the renewal, tender conditions and the treatment of competing bidders.
The proposal was approved at the committee’s meeting on November 2, after it had reportedly been kept pending at an earlier meeting on September 30. The committee chairman, Jitendra Kharachariya, told Nav Gujarat Samay that he had approved the proposal himself. The report said the agency, Khodal Corporation, will pay the municipal corporation Rs 1.27 crore annually under the arrangement.
The toy train was introduced as part of the Kankaria Lakefront project, which was undertaken when Narendra Modi was Gujarat chief minister. Khodal Corporation was given the operation and maintenance contract when the attraction was launched, and the agency has continued to receive the contract over the years, according to the report.
The decision has drawn scrutiny because the municipal corporation’s toy train, acquired at a cost of more than Rs 3.50 crore, has been tied to a 10-year contract rather than a shorter two- or five-year arrangement. The report said an agency from outside Gujarat had participated in the tender process but was excluded on the basis of the tender conditions. It did not provide the competing agency’s name or the specific clause on which it was disqualified.
The report also described disagreement within the municipal administration over who had authorised the proposal. The mayor and the leader of the civic party were quoted as saying that the committee chairman was independent, while the chairman said he had approved the proposal himself. The article carried allegations that municipal committee decisions are influenced through agenda meetings held before formal committee sessions. These allegations were not independently established in the supplied material.
The same Recreation Committee also approved a separate proposal to hand over the operation of a municipal gymnasium-cum-library in Juhapura to a private operator under a public-private partnership arrangement. The civic body had invited tenders after spending several crores on the facility. No bidder participated in the first tender, while only one party responded to the second tender.
Despite the single-bid situation, the proposal to appoint Ejazkhan Pathan to operate the facility for five years was placed before and approved by the committee. The arrangement includes a provision for a further three-year extension after review. The report said municipal circles had discussed Pathan’s past political associations, but it did not establish that those associations affected the tender decision.
The two approvals place the spotlight on how Ahmedabad’s municipal assets are contracted to private operators, particularly when tenders attract limited competition. The next relevant records will be the final contract terms, the tender evaluation documents, the reasons for disqualifying the competing toy-train bidder and the conditions governing any extension of the Juhapura gym-library arrangement.
