3 min readPuneMar 10, 2026 05:30 AM IST
The construction of a major gravitational wave observatory in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district, one of the country’s biggest science projects, remains in limbo with the Rs 1,600-crore work tender floated in April last year yet to be awarded, according to records accessed by The Indian Express under the RTI Act.
Responding to an RTI query by this newspaper, the Directorate of Construction Services and Estate Management of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), however, maintained that the project would be completed as scheduled within the next four years. “In the present scenario, the project is set to be completed by its original deadline of 2030,” it said.
The showpiece Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is designed to work in sync with two similar facilities in the United States which, in 2015, detected gravitational waves for the first time — exactly 100 years after their existence was predicted in Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
At the time of floating the work tender in April last year, Sunil Ganju, the then Scientific Secretary of DAE had told The Indian Express that construction would commence in the second half of 2025. However, the tender has undergone multiple date extensions since then, according to information available on the Government eMarketplace (GeM), the central public procurement portal.
In response to the RTI query about the current status of the tender, the directorate, in its reply dated February 10, wrote that “the financial bid of tender opened on 23.01.2026 (January 23, 2026)”, and that “the work has not been awarded yet”.
On the state of construction at the site, the directorate said, “The site office has only been constructed so far”.
The Centre’s financial approval of Rs 2,300 crore for LIGO-India was given in April 2023, two years before the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) tender was issued.
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Explained
Why LIGO matters
The ability to detect gravitational waves gives scientists a new vision to track cosmic events that light or other electromagnetic waves are not able to capture. The LIGO is designed to work in sync with two similar facilities in the United States.
Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior official involved with LIGO-India said, “The tender process is progressing at the right pace. One must appreciate that the work order is against a tender worth Rs 1,600 crore. It is for a mega-science project, which India is undertaking for the first time ever.”
According to the official, the tender will be awarded this year. The LIGOs in the US are a few years old now and the facility in India will be far more advanced, the official said.
LIGO observatories have two 4-km-long arms built at 90-degrees to each other. These are vacuum chambers with reflective mirrors at their ends. Beams of lasers are reflected off these mirrors and are used to detect gravitational waves. The first such wave was detected in 2015, which was caused by the merger of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago. The measurement of these waves requires unprecedented accuracy as their effects are extremely small.
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