Cuttack, Oct. 14: Three private players are in the race to bid for the Rs 147-crore solid waste management project in the city.

The Cuttack Municipal Corporation had invited fresh bids for the project. "At present, the technical bids of three applicants are being evaluated, and the financial bids would be opened by the end of next week," municipal commissioner Bikash Mohapatra told The Telegraph today.

On September 5, the corporation uploaded the bidding documents online, which was followed by a pre-bid meeting on September 15 in which five firms took part. But when the technical bids were opened on October 10, it was found three parties - Jyoti Enviro-Tech Private Ltd (Lucknow), Global Waste Management Cell Private Ltd (Delhi) and Jagruti Welfare Organisation (Bhubaneswar) - had expressed interest in the project, an official source said.The project involves sweeping, garbage collection, storage, segregation, transportation, composting and disposal of municipal solid waste at the existing land fill site.

"We have decided to spend Rs 2.45 crore every month on garbage collection and disposal marking an increase of Rs 95 lakh in the monthly expenditure of the civic body against the present expenditure of Rs 1.5 crore," Mohapatra said. According to the tender documentation released by the corporation, the private operator will take up sweeping in 40 of the 59 wards, door-to-door collection of garbage from 59 wards, mechanised sweeping of identified main roads in all 59 wards, garbage transportation to the transfer station and from there to the dumping site at Chakradharpur, over 20km from the city, for five years.

"The terms set for the contract aims to achieve the requirement of Swachh Bharat Mission and its service-level bench mark," said chairman of the civic body's standing committee for sanitation Ranjan Kumar Biswal.

This is the corporation's second attempt to complete the tender for waste management project.

After the five-year contract with Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited of Hyderabad for garbage collection in the city had expired in April 2016, the civic body continued with it on monthly contract basis.

It had started the tender process to implement the waste management project in August 2016 and cleared the technical bids of two private companies. But, Orissa High Court had issued a stay order on finalisation of the tender in September 2016.

On July 18, 2017, the high court quashed the provisions in the tender related to financial eligibility criteria for bidders and directed the municipal corporation to invite fresh tenders.