The Madras High Court on Thursday said it was a well settled position of law that in award of contracts, the Tamil Nadu government and its agency should act reasonably and fairly at all points of time.
To that extent, the tenderer had an enforceable right in the court which was competent to examine whether the aggrieved had been treated unfairly or discriminated against to the detriment of the public interest.
Justice M. Sathyanarayanan made the observation while passing an interim order on a writ petition filed by the CSEPDI-Trishe Consortium.
The petitioner had moved the court for a directive to the authorities to consider its representations against BHEL and take action as per the Tamil Nadu Transparency in Tenders Act for the Ennore SEZ Supercritical Thermal Power Project at the Ash Dyke of NCTPS (North Chennai Thermal Power Station) here. Both the petitioner and BHEL had participated in the tender, which had not been finalised.
The judge held that the writ petition was maintainable.
The petitioner said the authorities owed a duty to look into the “grave concerns” raised by it in the representations. However, they were ignored. The consortium said BHEL was a known defaulter across India in implementing projects.
Krishna Srinivasan, counsel for BHEL, submitted that the public sector company had a very good reputation and executed most of the power projects in the country and abroad. Therefore, the allegations levelled against it by the petitioner were wholly untrue.