Judgment:
This is an intra-court appeal filed by the writ petitioners of WP(C) 6145 of 2013 under Rule 2(3) of Chapter V-A of the Gauhati High Court Rules against the order dated 31.01.2014 passed by the learned Single Judge in abovementioned writ petition.
By impugned order, the learned Single Judge dismissed the appellants writ petition and declined to grant any relief claimed in the wit petition
So the short question, which arises for consideration in this appeal is whether learned Single judge was justified in dismissing the appellants writ petition?
The appellant (writ petitioner) pursuant to one advertisement issued by the State for âup-gradation of Raidang Kamar Gaon Roadâ submitted their tender along with others. One of the eligibility conditions for submission of the tender was that every tenderer must file documents along with their tender to prove that they had done similar kind of work successfully in past. The appellant filed documents along with their tender to prove this fact. The state (concern authorities ) examined the documents with a view to find out as to whether the appellant had done similar type of work in past to enable them to qualify for submitting the tender for the work in question and having examined the issue came to a conclusion that the work which the appellant claimed to had done in the past was not similar in nature to the work for which the tenders had been invited and therefore they were held ineligible to submit the tender for the work in question. Their tender was accordingly rejected on this ground, viz., that they did not fulfill one of the essential condition of the tender.
It is against this decision, the appellant filed the writ petition out of which this appeal arises. The writ court dismissed the writ petition and upheld the rejection.
This is what was held by the writ court while dealing with the issue of eligibility:
âAs to what is the requirement as regards the experience to qualify for awarding of the contract has been noted above. As per the said requirement, a contractor is required to satisfactorily complete at least one work similar to the work indicated in the contract data of condition of contract, which has been noted above. The Bid Evaluation Committee has held that the petitioner did not conform to the requirement of the said condition of having satisfactorily executed one similar nature of work. The whole emphasis of the petitioner is to show that the work that had earlier been executed is similar to that of the work in question. The Bid Evaluation Committee having found that the experience gathered by the petitioner by executing the work pertaining to road performance based maintenance contract of road did not conform to the requirement of experience required for the present work, it is not for this Court to sit on appeal over such finding. Although, the petitioner has tried to project that the particular work executed by it duly conformed to the requirement of the work involved in the present contract, but on the face of it, it is found that the in the said earlier contract, the work involved was performance based maintenance contract for road, but the work involved in the present contract is upgradation of the particular road, in which the works involved will be different.â
After hearing the learned counsel for the appellant and on perusal of the record of the case, we find no merit in this appeal.
In our view, the reasoning of the learned Single Judge quoted supra appears to be just and proper hence does not call for any interference in appeal.
We too are of the view that the courts do not sit as an appellate body over the decision of the experts to find out as to whether the work done by the appellant was similar in nature with the one for which tenders were invited. In the first instance, it is essentially the job of the experts in the field to examine and secondly, once the experts record a finding on evaluation of intricate issues, then such decision is immune from challenge on judicial side. It is only when the aggrieved is able to show that the decision on such issue is totally perverse or/and arbitrary or/and based on totally extraneous factors, an interference on judicial side is called for in appropriate cases but not otherwise. Such does not appear to be a case of this nature.
As observed supra, the State examined the nature of the work done by the appellant in past and compared it with the work for which tenders were invited and found that the appellant did not have experience in the work for which tenders had been invited. In other words, the State found that both the works i.e. the one done in past and the one to be done were not similar in nature.
We also on perusal of the documents find that the conclusion arrived at by the State on this issue is just and proper and does not involve any arbitrariness in it. It is taken with application of mind. It was rightly upheld by the writ court and we also agree with the same.
In the light of foregoing discussion, we find no merit in the appeal, which fails and is accordingly dismissed in limini.
No cost.