It is a well settled law that presumption has to be drawn that official work has been done according to legal procedure unless proved otherwise.
Also, the government has a right to enter into a contract with any person, but the State or its instrumentalities cannot act arbitrarily as tender should be judged on its own intrinsic merits as per the terms and conditions of the tender notice, the Madras High Court has said.
Justice Vinod K.Sharma said this while allowing writ petitions and quashing a tender and the subsequent act of granting work order to 16 persons for laying highway roads in Villupuram district.
He held that the facts and circumstances of the case showed that the authorities had not discharged their duty in accordance with rules by offering the tender at a much higher rate. They had denied right of participation of the petitioners in the tender.
It is the case of the petitioners, V. Devagi, S. Rama and S.M. Elumalai that in spite of the court order, tender schedule was not issued to them till the threat of contempt proceedings was issued.
The petitioners said no fair procedure had been followed in the entire tender process. The process was stage-managed to show that the tender was awarded in a fair and lawful manner. The petitioners sought to quash the proceedings in the tender advertisement of November 28 last year by the Divisional Engineer (Highways), NABARD and Village Roads, Cuddalore Division, and all acts done pursuant to the impugned order.
The authorities said once it was not admitted that the petitioners were prohibited from submitting the tender application, the petitioners had no locus standi to challenge the grant of tender, having not participated in the process.
Mr. Justice Vinod K. Sharma said the Divisional Engineer had not been able to give any justification as to why the tender applications were not sold to the petitioners and it was sold only pursuant to a court direction. It could not be believed that a person who approached the court to get the tender application would not submit the form within the stipulated time. The petitioners stand was further fortified from the postman's report.
An attempt was made by the authorities to file a counter to deny that the postman came to their office to deliver the tender applications; but the postman's positive report left no doubt that the petitioners' stand deserved to be accepted.
The Judge said it had been proved that the acceptance of tenders of 16 persons was illegal.
Keywords: highway roads, government tenders
