SHYAMALA SATYAPALAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The review petitioner is the widow of a contractor, who after undertaking to execute work for the Irrigation Department died without doing any serious work towards execution of the project. After the death of her husband, the review petitioner requested the Government to allot the work to her with undertaking to complete the work in time. The Government obliged by reawarding the contract to the review petitioner merely because she happened to be the widow of the contractor. The project as originally conceived should have been completed by 2001 itself. However, on account of the death of the contractor and reawarding of the contract to the widow, who is the review petitioner herein, time for completion of the work got extended till 2002. The review petitioner instead of completing the work kept on applying for extension of time and the respondents liberally granted it up to 2008. However, it was noticed that inspite of several extension of time availed by the review petitioner, the work was neither completed nor reached any serious stage of construction. Therefore, vide Ext. P-34 order dated 12.8.2010 the Government cancelled the contract. It was against the cancellation of the contract the review petitioner filed the Writ Petition and the learned Single Judge after verifying the records found no merit in the contentions raised by the review petitioner against cancellation of the contract reawarded to her only on compassionate grounds.

(2.) It is against this judgment, the review petitioner filed appeal before us.

(3.) During hearing of the appeal filed by the review petitioner, she repeated routine ground attributing the delay in execution of work to the respondents such as failure to supply raw materials by the respondents in time, failure to shift electric line from the area where work is to be executed, Munipality's failure to grant permission to cut the road etc. However, we noticed that the appellant's husband himself was a defaulter in as much as he did not do any serious work until his death, which was after one year of award of the contract, and the appellant behaved in the same manner her late husband did i. e. , taking no serious step for execution of the work. We, therefore upheld the judgment of the learned Single Judge upholding cancellation of the contract reawarded to the review petitioner on the death of her husband.