FIRST MILE STONE Vs. STATE OF CHHATTISGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner which is a registered firm participated in the tender proceedings pursuant to Notice Inviting Tender (NIT) issued on 22-10-2009 by respondent No.3 i.e., Chief Executive Officer, Distt. Panchayat, Jagdalpur, Distt. Bastar, for executing the work of online Data Entry in Monitoring Information System under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It was mentioned in the NIT that there will be three envelopes to be submitted by the tenderers. THE first envelope contains EMD, the second one contains technical offer and the last one contains financial offer. THE process for opening the tenders was prescribed, according to which, the first envelop EMD will be opened and if it is found fit, the second envelope of technical bids will be opened and after finding the technical bid in accordance with the requisite qualification/experience then the financial bid will be opened and the lowest bidder will be called upon for performing the contract works; but in the instant case only four tenderers including the petitioner and respondent No.4 have participated, out of which, two were rejected after opening the first envelop and the other two that is petitioner and respondent 4 remained in the field but instead of opening the technical bid first, respondent No.3 opened technical bid as well as the financial bids together and thus violated the tender conditions and prepared a comparative chart but the following was found from the note sheet: (Vernacular matter omitted) (See Table on next page) THE note sheets were obtained by the petitioner under Right to Information Act. Though the petitioner was the lowest bidder, but the contract was given to respondent No. 4 under one pretext or the other.

(2.) WE are conscious that the scope of judicial review is very limited but when we see that respondent No.3 had itself violated the tender conditions and instead of opening the technical bid first, opened both the technical and financial bids together, the arbitrary (Vernacular matter omitted) action on the part of respondent No.3 cannot be ruled out and thus this Court is inclined to interfere in the matter.

(3.) NO order as to costs. Order accordingly.