Uttarakhand High Court dismisses petition seeking inquiry on illegal grants of E-tender

The Uttarakhand High Court dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed seeking direction  to the respondents authorities regarding illegal acts for losing the huge revenue of the State by granting the E-tender  to two firms.

The Petitioner further seeks direction to the Higher Authorities to make enquiry by the State Investigation Team on respondents.

According to the petitioner, pursuant to a Notice Inviting Tender, issued by Director, Technical Education, five bids were submitted, however, the authorities illegally rejected the bid of lowest bidder and the second lowest bidder. This, according to petitioner, is serious irregularity, resulting in loss to public exchequer,    therefore, an enquiry be ordered into the matter and the responsible officer be punished. However, the ground on which bid of some of the bidders were rejected is not known.

While considering the PIL , the Division Bench of Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari and Justice  Alok Kumar Verma observed that  normally, financial bid of only such bidders are opened, whose bids are found to be technically responsive. The conditions mentioned in the tender notice / tender document are also not known, therefore, the question whether bids were rightly rejected or not, cannot be looked at.

Further the Court noted that  this is second petition for the same relief, as earlier Petition was dismissed as withdrawn by the High Court, vide order dated 27.10.2021, however, liberty to file fresh petition was not granted to petitioner.

The Counsel for petitioner requested leave to file a fresh petition, however, such leave was declined by the High Court. 

Since this is a second petition for the same cause of action, therefore, in the absence of liberty granted to petitioner in the earlier petition, the second petition cannot be entertained. Accordingly, the petition is dismissed by the High Court.

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