HC rejects Gammon plea against rejection of its bid for metro

The Delhi High Court today dismissed Gammon India Ltd's plea challenging DMRC's decision to reject its bid for a Rs 600 crore tender for building eight metro stations in the national capital.
A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva said a technical evaluation committee of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had concluded that Gammon's bid was not suitable and acceptable for award of the contract and the view appeared to be bona fide and cannot be faulted.
The expert committee had concluded that the company's bid was not suitable and acceptable for award of the tender and as such was technically non-responsive and non-compliant.

"The evaluation by the expert committee appears to be bona fide and as such, the same cannot be faulted. In view of the above, we find no merit in the petition and accordingly the same is dismissed but with no orders as to costs," the court said.
"It cannot be held that the Technical Committee and the Tender Evaluation Committee are only to examine the bid to ascertain whether the requisite documents have been submitted or not and are not to evaluate the bids/proposals to ascertain whether the bidder is suitable and the bid is acceptable or not," it also said.

"If the requirement was only the former then there would be no requirement to constitute a technical committee of experts who are specialists in the field," it said.

The bench refused to accept Gammon's contention that material other than what was called for could not have been taken into account, saying "If some material adverse to the bidder comes to the knowledge of the employer, the employer cannot be expected to ignore the same..."
The court also refused to accept Gammon's argument that taking into account adverse material would amount to its blacklisting, saying "blacklisting would occur where the petitioner (Gammon) is prohibited from participating in all contracts during the stipulated period."

"Petitioner has not been prohibited from participating. The said finding would not ipso facto apply to all subsequent tenders," it said.