Nafr High Court
Case Details
1 ROHIT KUMAR CHANDRA Digitally signed by ROHIT KUMAR CHANDRA 2025:CGHC:15873-DB NAFR HIGH COURT OF CHHATTISGARH AT BILASPUR WPC No. 1745 of 2025 M/s Surguja Bricks Industries Company Having Its Registered Office At Gurudwara Road, Bishrampur, District - Surajpur, Through Its Sole Proprietor Shri Babulal Agrawal ... Petitioner(s) versus 1 - State of Chhattisgarh Through The Secretary, Public Works Department, Mantralaya, Mahanadi Bhawan, Naya Raipur, District - Raipur (C.G.) 2 - Engineer-In-Chief Public Works Department, Nava Raipur, Atal Nagar (C.G.) 3 - Chief Engineer (Central Tender Cell) Office of The Engineer-In-Chief, Public Works Department, Nava Raipur, Atal Nagar, District - Raipur (C.G.) 4 - Chief Engineer Public Works Department, Surguja Zone, Ambikapur, District - Surguja (C.G.) 5 - Superintending Engineer Public Works Department, Surguja Circle, Ambikapur, District - Surguja (C.G.) Executive Engineer Public Works Department, Division 6- Manendragarh, District - Manendragarh (C.G.) ... Respondent(s) _________________________________________________________ For Petitioner For Respondents/State : :
Legal Reasoning
Mr. Harsh Wardhan Agrawal, Advocate Mr. Prafull N. Bharat, Advocate General along with Mr. Shashank Thakur, Additional Advocate General Hon'ble Shri Shri Hon'ble Ramesh Sinha, Arvind Kumar Verma Chief Justice , Judge
Decision
Order on Board 2 Per Ramesh Sinha , Chief Justice 04 . 04 .202 5 1. Heard Mr. Harsh Wardhan Agrawal, learned counsel for the petitioner. Also heard Mr. Prafull N. Bharat, learned Advocate General along with Mr. Shashank Thakur, learned Deputy Advocate General, appearing for the State / respondents. 2. The present writ petition has been filed by the petitioner under Article 226 of the Constitution of India seeking following reliefs : “10.1 That, the Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to call for the entire records in respect of the grievance of the Petitioner kept in the possession of the Respondents, for its kind perusal. 10.2 That, this Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to quash and set aside the impugned letter dated 19.03.2025 (ANNEXURE - P/7) issued by respondent No. 4 and declare the same to be illegal and non-est in the eye of law. 10.3 That, this Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to direct the respondents to consider the petitioner herein eligible for the tender and proceed ahead with opening of financial bid of the petitioner and thereafter proceed in accordance with law. 10.4 That, the Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to grant any other relief which the Hon'ble Court deems fit and proper in the facts and circumstances of the present case. 10.5 That, the Hon'ble Court may kindly be pleased to grant cost of the petition to the Petitioner.” 3. Brief facts of the case are that the respondent No. 3 issued tender 3 notice (First Call) NIT No. 246/TC/24-25 dated 08.01.2025 (wrongly mentioned as NIT No. 334/TC/22-23 dated 09.12.2022 in the writ petition) for the work of "Construction of Road From Gram Ramgarh to Gram Kotadol Length 27.20 Km, District: Korea (C.G.) Work Code- W25598" for Rs. 4521.56 Lacs for a period of 12 months. Pursuant to the said notice inviting tender, the petitioner applied for the said tender in the online portal of the respondent-PWD and submitted all his documents. The respondent No.4 issued a letter dated 03.03.2025 to the petitioner alleging that the bid submitted by the petitioner is not proper and not in accordance with the terms and conditions of the tender as the petitioner has submitted the experience of joint venture and the other experience is of less value, which is not fulfilling the qualification criteria prescribed in the tender. Thereafter, vide the said letter, the petitioner was called upon to submit his explanation else, the petitioner would be declared disqualified from the tender process. The petitioner submitted his detailed reply vide its letter dated 05.03.2025 before the respondent No. 4. After submission of reply by the petitioner, the respondent No.4 issued another letter on 17.03.2025, alleging that the petitioner has not submitted Annexure-2 in proper format as per the terms of the NIT. The petitioner again by way of its reply dated 19.03.2025 pointed out to the respondent No. 4 that the petitioner has duly submitted all details and information as required under the NIT. 4 However, vide impugned letter dated 19.03.2025, the respondent no.4 has declared the petitioner disqualified on the earlier ground regarding the experience of joint venture. Hence, this petition. 4. Learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that the impugned letter dated 19.03.2025 issued by the respondent No.4 disqualifying the petitioner from the tender process is illegal, arbitrary, unreasonable as it is settled principle of law that the experience and credential of a joint venture is liable to be equally distributed among the members of the joint venture as per the terms of the joint venture agreement. In the present case, the petitioner is duly entitled for 49% of the experience of the joint venture individually. He further submitted that the impugned letter fails to disclose proper reasons and is a non-speaking order, therefore, is vitiated in the eyes of law, and as such, the same is liable to be quashed. 5. On the other hand, learned Advocate General opposed the aforesaid submission and submitted that as per the qualification criteria of the NIT in question, to qualify for award of the Contract, each Prime contractor in the same name and style (tenderer), in its name must have in the last five years achieved in “any one financial year” a financial turnover of construction work of at least 60% of the probable amount of contract for which bid has been invited, but the petitioner has submitted his tender in the name of M/s Surguja Bricks Industries Company, whereas he has submitted the experience certificate of joint venture having its 1st 5 partner as M/s Poddar (MP) 51% and 2nd partner as M/s Surguja Bricks Industries SBI 49%, therefore, the petitioner was issued show-cause vide letter dated 03.03.2025, but, when satisfactory reply was not submitted by the petitioner, vide impugned letter dated 19.03.2025, he was declared disqualified. He further submitted that as there is no illegality or infirmity in disqualifying the petitioner, as such, the instant petition is liable to be dismissed. 6. We have heard learned counsel for the parties and perused the materials appended with the writ petition. 7. From perusal of the prayers and pleadings made in the writ petition, further taking into consideration, the rival submissions advanced by learned counsel for the parties and the qualification criteria of the NIT in question, it transpires that to qualify for award of the Contract, each Prime contractor in the same name and style (tenderer), in its name must have in the last five years achieved in “any one financial year” a financial turnover of construction work of at least 60% of the probable amount of contract for which bid has been invited, but the petitioner has submitted his tender in the name of M/s Surguja Bricks Industries Company, whereas he has submitted the experience certificate of joint venture having its 1st partner as M/s Poddar (MP) 51% and 2nd partner as M/s Surguja Bricks Industries SBI 49%, therefore, the petitioner was issued show-cause vide letter dated 03.03.2025, but, when satisfactory reply was not submitted by the 6 petitioner, vide impugned letter dated 19.03.2025, he was declared disqualified. 8. In Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. v. Nagpur Metro Rail Corpn. Ltd.1, the Hon’ble Supreme Court has observed that the owner or the employer of a project having authored the tender documents, is the best person to understand and appreciate its requirements and interpret its documents. 9. In N.G. Projects Ltd. v. Vinod Kumar Jain2,, the Apex Court has observed as under: “22. The satisfaction whether a bidder satisfies the tender condition is primarily upon the authority inviting the bids. Such authority is aware of expectations from the tenderers while evaluating the consequences of non- performance. In the tender in question, there were 15 bidders. Bids of 13 tenderers were found to be unresponsive i.e., not satisfying the tender conditions. The writ petitioner was one of them. It is not the case of the writ petitioner that action of the Technical Evaluation Committee was actuated by extraneous considerations or was malafide. Therefore, on the same set of facts, different conclusions can be arrived at in a bona-fide manner by the Technical Evaluation Committee. Since the view of the Technical Evaluation Committee was not to the liking of the writ petitioner, such decision does not warrant for interference in a grant of contract to a successful bidder. 23. In view of the above judgments of this Court, the Writ Court should refrain itself from imposing its decision over the decision of the employer as to whether or not to accept the bid of a tenderer. The Court does not have the expertise to examine the terms and conditions of the present day economic activities of the State and this limitation should be kept in view. Courts should be even more reluctant in interfering with contracts involving technical issues as there is a requirement of the necessary expertise to adjudicate upon such issues. The approach of the Court should be not to find fault with 1 2