VISHAL SHARMA Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This order shall dispose of two writ petitions namely CWP No. 21361 of 2011 and CWP No. 22692 of 2011. The facts are being taken from CWP No. 21361 of 2011.

(2.) The present writ petition has been filed under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution of India for issuance of a writ in the nature of certiorari for quashing the unguided vast arbitrary discretion conferred on the tender evaluation authority for evaluation of the tenders and further prayer is made for issuing an appropriate writ in the nature of mandamus directing the respondents to consider the petitioner for acceptance of the petitioner's tender as the petitioner had quoted the lowest rate.

(3.) The pleaded case of the petitioner is that respondent no. 2, M/s. Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. is a public sector undertaking and the trade of oil is controlled by the State through its public sector undertakings and the entire administrative and financial control of the respondents is with the Union of India and, therefore, the present writ is maintainable as the respondent-corporation is an instrumentality of the State as envisaged under Article 12 of the Constitution of India and accordingly amenable to writ jurisdiction of this Court. The case of the petitioner is that applications were invited by way of advertisement in the newspaper for transporting petroleum products from its refinery at Panipat to different locations to cater to the needs of Haryana, Punjab and Delhi and a short public notice was issued in the newspapers and the detailed terms and conditions were contained in the technical bid tender form and price bid tender form. The last date for submitting the tenders was 29.07.2011 and the technical bid as well as the price bid was to be opened at 4.00 p.m. The petitioner submitted tender form no. 406 and the minimum rate settled by the respondents was 1.75 per kilo litre per kilometer and there could be variations of plus/minus 10% of the estimated rate and the estimated rate as per the price bid tender was 1.99 per kilo litre per kilometer. More than 500 tenders were received and tender forms were issued for two set of tenderers. One set of tenderers was those already operating retail outlets of the Indian Oil Corporation and owning bulk transport carriers and their vehicles could be used for carrying products for the dealer himself as well as for the other outlets. The other set of tenderers including the petitioner were purely transporters who had invested huge money in getting oil tankers with the capacity of 12 kilo litres to 20 kilo litres and were earning their livelihood through transport business.