The factory is located at
Madhepura, a city and municipality of
Bihar which got its existence as an independent revenue
district on 9 May 1981. Madhepura is located on the banks of river
Kosi which is one of the largest tributaries of the
Ganges. It consists of 13 divisional blocks. It is surrounded by six districts of
Bihar and has got a good road connectivity via
NH 107 and
railway connectivity via and . During Sep 2013, the
Ministry of Railways had received bids from six global firms:
Siemens,
Alstom,
Bombardier,
General Electric,
CSR Corp and CNR Corp. However,
Indian Railways rejected the bid of both Chinese firms (
CSR and CNR) for the two giant manufacturing projects in
Bihar. In January 2014, the
Union Cabinet gave its approval for setting up ELF
Madhepura and DLF
Marhowra at an approximate cost of INR 1293.57 crore and INR 2052.58 crore respectively. In September 2015, first major
FDI offer in
railway was when three global infrastructure giants -
Siemens,
Alstom and
Bombardier bid for setting up ELF
Madhepura at the cost of nearly INR 1300 crore on a
joint venture basis with
Indian Railways. However, French major
Alstom emerged as the lowest bidder for the setting up, production and procurement of electric locomotives in
Madhepura,
Bihar. In November 2015, the
Ministry of Railways awarded the contracts for
Madhepura project and
Marhowra project to
Alstom and General Electric respectively in a collective amount of USD 6 billion. This multi crore rupees deal was seen as the country's first FDI in the railway sector. In December 2015, Indian Railways issued the Letters of Award to both the companies to establish diesel and electric locomotive factories in Bihar. French PM
Francois Hollande's visit to India in January 2016 has made this project sharper to execute. After the allocation of of land to Alstom, the ground breaking ceremony was held secretly in March 2016. Although, land acquisition was sometimes tense, construction of the factory began in July 2016. == Project ==