HYDERABAD: The fourth edition of Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad's `Fund Your City' initiative left the civic body richer by Rs. 34.02 crores here on Saturday. Responding to an offer to improve city infrastructure, a total of 25 agencies participated in the auction and bid for foot over bridges, medians and signage among others.

The auction for 14 foot over bridges at Lakdi-ka-pul, Erragadda, S.R.Nagar, Masab Tank among others saw some hectic bidding and in the process, the corporation too agreed to relax some conditions on Upset BOT period. The FOB at Lakdi-ka-pul, proposed at estimated cost of Rs. 57 lakhs and an upset licence period of 12 years for the builder, went for a two-and-a-half-year term.

Similar competition was witnessed for FOBs at other places and the one at Wesley College, proposed at Rs. 39 lakh and a licence period of eight years, ended up with a bid of 21 months.

Motivating talk

Though the auction for footpath railing including street furniture on both sides of Raj Bhavan road with advertisement space began on a dull note with no takes initially, it picked up after MCH Commissioner Sanjay Jaju went in for some motivating sales talk. The auction conducted by Additional Commissioner N.V.S. Reddy also had 11 uni-poles, modern street lighting on three road stretches, signage and advertisement boards on flyovers, advertisement space on the Patherghatti central median and installation of new traffic signals at intersections.

The other infrastructure that is to be set up through private participation include advertisement space on existing traffic signals, installation of sign boards in silence zones, schools, no horn zones and hospital zones. Traffic directional boards at 50 important locations in the city too went for auction.

The open-bid-cum auction had local participants and a couple of advertising agencies from Maharashtra and Gujarat. When the proceedings turned competitive, Mr. Reddy chose to advise the bidders on exercising caution. However, Mr. Jaju sought to dismiss the same and said, "Let there be some competition and bidders are aware of what they are doing".

The agencies that took part in the bidding included Nakshatra, Selvel, Saroos Ad and In & Out.

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