NHAI has a likely new builder for one of the slowest pieces of the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway in Gujarat. Ashoka Buildcon told the stock exchanges on November 5 that it is the lowest bidder (L1) for Package 9, the 26.6 km Karvad-Jujuwa section in Valsad district, with a quote of Rs 865.90 crore excluding GST, DeshGujarat and Trade Brains reported. The job covers the balance work on the eight-lane, access-controlled road between Km 128.0 and Km 154.6, on EPC terms, with 18 months to finish and a 10-year defect liability period. L1 status is not yet an award; NHAI still has to issue the contract.
Why Package 9 went back to tender
The stretch was first part of a trio of south Gujarat packages, 8, 9 and 10, awarded to Pune-based Roadway Solutions India Infra Limited (RSIIL). NHAI terminated RSIIL’s Package 9 contract over slow progress and invited fresh bids in May for the remaining work, putting its own estimate at Rs 873.62 crore, according to DeshGujarat’s report on the retender. The neighbouring Jujuwa-Gandeva package (Package 8) had already been taken away from the same firm earlier in the year.
Six companies bid this time: Agrawal Infrabuild, Singal Infra, Kalthia Engineering and Construction, Ashoka Buildcon, RRSM Infra, and RSIIL itself, which entered the retender for the work it had lost. Ashoka’s quote sits about Rs 7.7 crore, or roughly 0.9%, under NHAI’s estimate.
A bidder returning after its own NHAI suspension
Ashoka’s win comes a year after its own trouble with the highway authority. In late 2025 NHAI barred the Nashik-based company from its tenders for a period after two precast girders collapsed on an elevated corridor it was building on NH-66 in Kerala, killing a driver, Construction World reported at the time. The company blamed a failed hydraulic jack. Its presence in this tender shows it is back in NHAI bidding, and the Valsad package will test whether a fresh contractor can move faster on a stretch where the previous one stalled.
The 18-month clock for Valsad and the expressway
The Karvad-Jujuwa section runs from Karvad, near NH-56, to the Valsad interchange at Jujuwa on Dharampur Road, with the separate Talasari-Karvad package to its south. Until the chain is complete, traffic between Mumbai and south Gujarat keeps using NH-48 through Vapi, Valsad and Navsari.
If NHAI signs the contract in the coming weeks, an 18-month build would end around mid-2028. The Centre told the Rajya Sabha in March that it is targeting completion of the whole Delhi-Mumbai Expressway by March 2028, DeshGujarat reported. On Package 9’s timeline alone, that target looks hard to meet, so drivers heading south from Valsad should plan around NH-48 for a while longer.
Sources: DeshGujarat, Trade Brains, Construction World
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.