Steps taken by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), at the insistence of the Madras High Court, to procure and deploy 900 modern pushcarts for use by vendors at Marina Beach hit a roadblock with the Supreme Court directing the civic body to maintain status quo.
Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman, Navin Sinha and K.M. Joseph passed the interim order on an appeal preferred by AIR Systems Limited, one of the bidders for the supply of the push carts.
The judges directed the Corporation to maintain status quo as on Tuesday and not proceed further.
PIL filed
In 2015, Fishermen Care, a non-governmental organisation, had filed a public interest litigation petition in the High Court regarding welfare of fishermen. In 2018, a Division Bench, led by Justice Vineet Kothari (now transferred to Gujarat High Court), expanded the scope of the case.
The Bench began issuing a series of directions for the beautification of Marina Beach by regularising vendors and clearing the fish sellers squatting on its loop road.
As part of the beautification process, the GCC decided to procure modern and colourful pushcarts.
When tenders were called for, two firms submitted their bids.
While AIR Systems Limited quoted ₹16.44 crore, A Quad Enterprises quoted ₹17.20 crore. However, the tender was allotted to the latter because the former supposedly did not conform to other conditions. Immediately, AIR Systems Limited filed a writ petition before a single judge and obtained an interim order in its favour on November 10.
However, when this was brought to the notice of the Division Bench, it stayed the single judge’s order and tagged the writ petition along with the PIL petition.
Equal split
Subsequently, the Bench suggested that the contract could be equally divided between both firms so that all 900 pushcarts could be procured within three months and the Corporation obliged. On December 4, the court ordered that both the suppliers should also be penalised for delay in supply.
Ordering that 300 pushcarts must be supplied every month, the Bench said the suppliers would suffer a penalty of reduction of price to the extent of 10% per cart if the delay was more than two days, 25% per cart if the delay was more than a week and 50% per cart if the delay was more than 15 days.
When the case was listed again on December 14, a senior counsel representing AIR Systems told the court that his client was not interested in taking up the contract since the company was not agreeable to the penalty clause of reduction in price if there was a delay in supply.
After recording his submission, the Division Bench directed the Corporation to issue work orders for 100% of the supply to A-Quad Enterprises.
It was this order that had now been taken on appeal to the Supreme Court and an order of status quo had been obtained.
