LARSEN AND TOUBRO LIMITED Vs. HINDUSTAN AERONAUTICS LIMITED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner is before this Court seeking for issue of mandamus and direct the respondent to empanel the petitioner as a contractor pursuant to the tender notice dated 14.03.2012 published by the respondent for empanelment as Contractor for the Design and Construction of Aircraft Manufacturing Facility ('MMRCA' for short) at Aircraft Division, Bangalore. The petitioner is also seeking that the letter dated 21.09.2012 (Annexure-Q) be quashed. On empanelment, the issue of tender documents are also sought.

(2.) The facts in brief are that the petitioner is a company which is engaged in engineering, manufacturing and construction. The respondent which is a Government company under the Administrative control of the Ministry of Defence had issued a tender notice for empanelment of Contractors in respect of the construction of MMRCA facility. The notice was published on 14.03.2012 on the website of the respondent-company. The interested contractors were to respond through e-mode. The procedure for uploading the documents was indicated and the last date for submission of the documents for enabling empanelment was to be made before 25.04.2012. The petitioner contends that they had submitted 79 documents including the required documents for empanelment on the Portal of the respondent between 24.04.2012 and 12.03 hours on 25.04.2012 which according to them is prior to the outer time that was fixed. The petitioner however did not receive the acknowledgment for the same. Hence, the petitioner addressed a letter dated 26.04.2012 to the respondent and sought acknowledgment for the same by enclosing thereto the screenshots indicating the uploading of the documents.

(3.) The petitioner contends that the respondent informed the petitioner that the petitioner had stated the option "IMM" instead of "ALL" while selecting the Department in the user profile at stage No.1 and the documents submitted as per stage No.2 got saved in the document library of the respondents server and as such, it was not acknowledged. The e-mail dated 20.04.2012 exchanged between the parties is relied upon. An earlier e-mail dated 30.11.2011 is referred to contend that the option "IMM" was chosen as per the advise of the respondents. The petitioner contends that when the documents had left the computer resource of the petitioner and had been uploaded in the computer resource of the respondent, the documents submitted on 25.04.2012 is to be considered as valid and having been uploaded within the deadline. Reference is also made to an earlier instance where this Court had accepted such error by a tenderer and direction has been issued to consider their documents. In addition, the petitioner also refers to the subsequent meetings and the correspondence exchanged between the parties wherein the petitioner had brought all these aspects to the notice of the respondents and had sought that the documents submitted by the petitioner be considered for assessing their claim for empanelment. Despite the same, the respondents had not considered and presently, when the respondents have issued the tender documents to the others and had excluded the petitioner on the said ground, the petitioner is before this Court.