NHAI Re-Tenders Sevoke Teesta Bridge at ₹844 Crore

Retender and Cost Revision

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has re-tendered the second Teesta bridge at Sevoke in north Bengal, converting an earlier four-lane proposal into a six-lane bridge and approach package spanning roughly 6.85 km at an estimated ₹844 crore.

The fresh process follows NHAI's cancellation of the January 2026 tender, which had priced the bridge and its approaches at about ₹840.29 crore.

The scope change is the more consequential detail. A near-flat cost revision—₹840.29 crore to ₹844 crore—now underwrites a 50% increase in carriageway capacity.

That raises an immediate commercial question for prospective bidders: whether the revised estimate reflects genuine re-engineering or an under-priced redesign that will only be corrected through bid discovery.

Why the Corridor Matters

For Kolkata and eastern markets, the corridor logic is clear. NH-10 remains the principal surface link from the Siliguri area toward Sikkim and the wider Northeast.

The ageing Coronation Bridge across the Teesta leaves the network with limited redundancy, and the 2023 glacial lake outburst flood showed how quickly a single mountain route can fail.

In July 2026, West Bengal and Sikkim authorities also took up scientific sediment management along the Teesta, reinforcing the basin's fragility.

Execution Risk and Procurement Signal

Execution risk is concentrated in the terrain. A six-lane crossing in a Himalayan river landscape must reconcile the following before any contractor can mobilise:

- Flood behaviour
- River morphology
- Slope stability
- Ecological clearances

NHAI's decision to cancel the first process citing only "administrative reasons"—without public detail—transfers pre-award uncertainty back onto bidders, who now have to re-price a structurally different scope.

The industry signal is procurement-related, not merely geographic. NHAI is prioritising climate-resilient redundancy on a strategic corridor, but repeated administrative cancellations and scope resets risk eroding bidder confidence precisely where competitive tension is needed to keep a hard-to-build package deliverable.

The next test is whether the six-lane scope survives cost discovery without another cycle of delay.