SANGHI TECHNOLOGIES PRIVATE LIMITED Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (for short, referred to as IGNCA in the Deed of Declaration of the said body) floated tenders for supply and installation of "Integrated Document Imaging and Management System for Scanning and Search through - put and retrieval thereof as images on any desired index". Petitioner No. 1 and respondent No.3 herein submilted their respective bids for tender. The tender was awarded by IGNCA, respondent No.2 herein, to respondent No.3. Petitioner No. 1, a Pvt. Limited Company, through petitioner No.2, its Managing Director, filed the present writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution, seeking a writ, order and direction in the nature of certiorari quashing the process of selection/acceptance of the bid of the 3rd respondent by respondent No.2 and communication of its acceptance to Respondent No.3, in relation to the said tender. Union of India, through the Secretary, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of Culture, was impleaded as the first respondent on the plea that respondent No.2 is a body constituted under the Department of Culture under the Ministry of Human Resources Development and is an instrumentality of the State.

(2.) Respondent No.2, IGNCA, raised a preliminary objection regarding the maintainability of the petition on the ground that it being not a State, was not amenable to the writ jurisdiction. In support, reliance was placed on an earlier Bench decision of this Court in CWP No.1831/92, decided on 23 October 1992 (J.S. Tanwar v. Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts & Anr) wherein the Court had upheld a similar objection raised by respondent No.2. The petitioners herein countered the preliminary objection raised. Reliance by them was placed on another Bench decision of this Court in the case of Kuldip Mehta v. Union of India, 1993 (25) DRJ 490. The Bench, hearing the instant case (D.P.Wadhwa and Dr. M.K.Sharma, JJ) finding an apparent conflict in the two judgments, in particular taking note of the fact that the judgment in CWP No.1831/92 was rendered in the case of the 2nd respondent itself and while observing that the present case may be covered by the decision in Kuldip Mehta's case, thought it appropriate to refer the case for the opinion of a larger Bench. This is how the matter is now before us.

(3.) The question referred is as follows: