GIRIDHARILAL AGRAWAL Vs. STATE OF ODISHA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Claiming to be the lowest bidder for the tender for the work "Construction of Road under Pradhan Mantri Gramya Sadak Yojana vide Package No.OR-24-203-A Hatibandha to Dhungiamunda via Charpali", the Petitioner, who is a registered 'A' Class contractor has filed this writ petition for a mandamus to be issued to the Opposite Parties comprising the State of Odisha (Opposite Party No.1), the Engineer-in-Chief, Rural Works (Opposite Party No.2), the Chief Engineer (PMGSY) (Opposite Party No.3), the Superintending Engineer, Rural Works Circle, Bhawanipatana (Opposite Party No.4) and Executive Engineer, Rural Works Division, Khariar, Nuapada (Opposite Party No.5) to execute the agreement in his favour for the said contract. Further prayer of the Petitioner is for quashing the proceeding dtd. 12/3/2019, communicated to the tender authority on 15 th March, 2019, disqualifying his bid.

(2.) Among the tender conditions, Clause 4.4 reads as under:

(3.) It appears that four bidders including the present Petitioner had participated pursuant to the tender call notice. According to the Petitioner, the technical bids of all four of them were found to be in order. It is further stated that on 4/3/2019, the price bid was opened and the Petitioner was found to have quoted the lowest amount and was declared L-1. The Petitioner states that he learnt of a complaint against him by unknown persons that the tender authority had counted one fourth of the value of the similar nature of past work of the Petitioner instead of executed one third of similar nature of work. The Petitioner states that he met the Opposite Party Nos.2 and 3 and submitted a representation dtd. 28/2/2019 stating that the work was to be executed under Nuapada district and that as per the guidelines of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India as well as the guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Nuapada district is a left wing extremism (LWE)s affected (Naxal Affected District) and that as such it counted towards one fourth of similar nature of work in terms of the tender notice.