The Madras High Court Bench here has directed the Madurai Collector to settle a bill for Rs.1.36 crore raised by a Chennai-based private enterprise for having rented out 88 computers, 42 printers and 44 UPS devices for Socio Economic Caste Census 2011.
Allowing a writ petition filed by the firm, Justice T.S. Sivagnanam quashed an order passed by the Collector on May 26 agreeing to pay only Rs.65.69 lakh to the petitioner company on the ground that the rent quoted by it was way higher than market rates.
The judge held that it was “absolutely arbitrary and unreasonable” on the part of the Collector to question the rental amount quoted by the petitioner after having taken the computers and other peripherals on rent and used them between April 1, 2012 and February 28, 2013.
He said the Collector had issued instructions to the Block Development Officers and Municipal Commissioners in the district to hire the computers and peripherals following a letter written by the Director of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj on February 9, 2012.
On the Collector’s instructions, the BDOs and Municipal Commissioners received quotations for hiring the computers, forwarded them to the Collector, obtained appropriate directions, accepted the equipment supplied by the petitioner and utilised them.
“Under such circumstances, the quotations submitted by the BDOs and the commissioners should be deemed to have been accepted and the entire contract should be considered to have been fulfilled. The question of refusing to accept the rates does not arise at this distant point of time,” the judge said.
He also pointed out that the Collector had submitted in the court a set of quotations received by him from other firms between September 2013 and March 2014 to establish that the rates quoted by the writ petitioner in 2012 were on the higher side.
Mr. Justice Sivagnanam said the Collector ought to have made things explicitly clear, spelt out the conditions of the contract and decided on the rates before accepting the computers and other peripherals offered by the petitioner.
Too late“It is too late now to claim that the rates are on the higher side especially when the third respondent (Collector) has not placed on record any record to show that the petitioner would agree to receive payment as per rates fixed by the third respondent at a later point of time,” he added.
