SHARAD OSWAL Vs. MADHYA PRADESH POORVA KSHETRA VIDYUT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) PETITIONERS are proprietors of various registered small-scale industries. They are engaged in manufacturing and supply of transformers to respondent No. 1. They were awarded contracts from time to time for supplying the transformers to respondent No. 1 as per the terms and conditions of N. I. T.

(2.) RESPONDENT No. 2 is Executive Director of respondent No. 1 who invited tenders for supply of various items including distribution transformers of various capacity ranging from 63 KVA to 315 KVA vide N. I. T. contained in Annexure p/1. Tenders are required to be submitted into two parts namely technical bid and price bid. Last date of submission and opening of bid was 25-7-2007 in respect of the distribution transformers. Date of opening of price bid was fixed as 10-8-2007. A corrigendum as contained in Annexure P/2 was issued on 24-7-2007 i. e. a day before opening of the tender by which certain conditions and criteria were added in clause 10 which deals with basic qualification of the bidders. It was provided by Annexure P/2 that a tenderer would be eligible to submit the bid only if he had a capital of Rs. 8. 5 crores approximately. This apart, a further condition was imposed that the bidders income statement should show average annual sales in supply of material and equipment for last three years. This amount approximately comes to Rs. 6. 5 crores. It was clearly mentioned in the corrigendum that in case tenderer does not fulfil the aforesaid criteria, his tender shall be rejected.

(3.) IN the writ petition, it is stated that there are about 90 small scale industries in the State of M. P. which are engaged in manufacturing and supply of transformers to the respondent No. 1. It is further stated that on account of prescription of the aforesaid condition by corrigendum, marked as Annexure P/2 about 90 small scale industries engaged in manufacturing transformers will be excluded from participating in the process of tender. They are entirely dependent on respondent No. 2 for their survival as respondent No. 1 is a sole purchaser of transformers in the State of M. P. No such condition was ever prescribed in the past. Moreover, a practice has been prevalent in the respondents' company that entire quantity of supply was never allotted to a single individual and instead several tenderers used to be asked to supply the tendered quantity at the rates quoted by lowest tenderer. Entire quantity had never been allotted to a single individual including the lowest one. It is stated further that the imposition of condition by corrigendum (Annexure P/2) was for extraneous consideration and is arbitrary and mala fide. This is also violative of the policy formulated by the government of India giving preference to small scale industries. Once the qualification is prescribed by the NIT, the same cannot be altered to the disadvantage of tenderers even by way of corrigendums.