SURYA ALLOY INDUSTRIES LIMITED Vs. CENTRAL RAILWAY BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Challenging the action of the Railways in the matter of placement of purchase order to the private respondent no.6 vis-a-vis the petitioner on the ground of arbitrariness, extraneous consideration and violation of the Public Procurement Policy (Make in India) Order, 2017 dated 15.06.2017 issued by the Department of Industrial Promotion and Policy, Ministry of Commerce, and a complete go-bye to the guidelines of the Central Vigilance Commission, the present writ application has been filed invoking the extra-ordinary jurisdiction of this Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India.

(2.) Petitioner is a Company incorporated under the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956, it is said to be engaged in manufacturing railway track like elastic rail clips, inserts etc. and is engaged in the business of manufacture and supply of commodities like Ferro Silicon, Ferro Manganese etc. It is a RDSO approved manufacturer and claims to have executed contracts of several crores by effectively and successfully supplying track items to the Indian Railways. The petitioner claims that till date no dispute whatsoever has been raised in respect of the supplies made by the petitioner to the railways or by any of its customers.

(3.) With the aforementioned background, the petitioner participated in the tender floated by the respondent railways being Notice Inviting Tender No. 01161037 published on 30.05.2017, inviting bids for supply of Ferro Silicon from various categories of supplies as specified in the tender document. The manufacturers who were unregistered/untried were also eligible to participate in the tender and the respondents reserved their right to treat such vendor as a developmental vendor and place developmental orders not exceeding 20% of the ordered quantity subject to the bidder being the lowest bidder. The petitioner being unregistered/untried as far as the respondent nos.2 to 5 are concerned i.e. the Railway Wheel Plant, Bela (in short 'RWP, Bela') participated in the bid being a manufacturer of the said item/commodity.