KIRAN CORPORATION Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This petition is filed by unsuccessful bidder for a government contract for supply of sports equipments. He has challenged the entire tender process on the ground that the selection of the successful tenderer was vitiated on the grounds of legal and factual malafides.

(2.) Brief facts are as under.

(3.) Petitioner firm is an authorized dealer of sales and maintenance of gym and health equipments. The petitioner has the agency of one Unique Gymnasium and Healthclub Products who are the manufacturers of such equipments. Respondent no.2 District Sports Officer, Mehsana had invited online tender for supply and maintenance of gym equipments at Visnagar for the year 201617. As per this notice, last date for submission of tender bids was 01.08.2016. The tenders would be opened on 03.08.2016 and the financial bids would be opened on the same date. The petitioner and seven other agencies applied in response to such tender notice. At the technical stage, four including the present petitioner, respondent no.3Multi Purpose Manpower Support Services, respondent no.4 Aishwarya Sports and one North Gujarat Sports and Scientific qualified. The rest were found technically not qualified. As per the tender inviting agency, all four technically qualified agencies were allowed to make presentation before a specially constituted committee of high level officials. Each committee member had alloted marks under different headings to each agency. As per the predecision, an agency had to secure more than 70% marks to qualify for the next stage of opening the financial bid. In the present case, the marks were alloted out of total of 90 and therefore, the agency in order to qualify, had to secure a minimum of 63 marks. According to the official respondent, only two out of four technically qualified agencies i.e. Aishwarya Sports and Multi Purpose Manpower Support Services secured such qualified marks. Aishwarya Sports secured 70 marks and Multi Purpose Manpower Support Services secured 78 marks out of 90. The petitioner as well as North Gujarat Sports and Scientific secured less than 63 marks out of 90 and were therefore disqualified at that stage. According to the official respondent, the price bids of the said two agencies Aishwarya Sports and Multi Purpose Manpower Support Services were opened and since the quotation of Multi Purpose Manpower Support Services was lower of two; such agency was selected and ultimately awarded the contract for supply and maintenance of equipments. It is pointed out that the government had hired the respondent no.5( N)Code Solutions for providing the online portal and other technical support.