Delhi HC dismisses GEEC plea contesting Raniganj methane block bid

The court said audit logs showed no evidence of a technical glitch in the e-bidding portal and found GEEC lacked diligence in completing the bidding process

The Delhi High Court has dismissed a petition filed by Great Eastern Energy Corporation (GEEC) seeking directions to the Centre to treat its bid for a coal bed methane block in West Bengal’s Raniganj Coalfield as valid.

 

The company had also sought, in the alternative, a fresh bidding process.

 

The court rejected that request as well, observing that GEEC failed to demonstrate any bona fide intention to complete the submission of its final bid within the prescribed timeline.

 

GEEC argued that it could not complete the process because of a technical malfunction during the critical stage of online price bid submission. According to the company, the e-bidding portal incorrectly reflected that its net worth was insufficient.

 

 

A division bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Amit Mahajan, however, held that a detailed review of the audit trail report revealed no evidence of any systemic malfunction in the portal.

 

The court noted that the audit logs reflected multiple fragmented and incomplete actions by GEEC, along with substantial gaps between various stages of the process, despite the company being aware that the bid submission deadline was nearing.

 

The bench said the conduct “clearly demonstrates a clear lack of diligence in completing the bidding process within the prescribed time”.

 

Rejecting the allegations of a technical glitch, the government had argued that the bidding mechanism was entirely system-driven and there was nothing on record to establish that GEEC’s failure to upload its financial bid was caused by any malfunction in the portal.

 

“In view of the aforegoing, the argument of learned senior counsel representing the petitioner (GEEC) that the alleged e-portal malfunction was attributable to the respondents (Union of India and others) lacks merit and has no nexus with the material placed on record. In particular, the logs provided by the portal operator show that another bidder, who had initiated the process later than the petitioner, was nevertheless able to successfully complete bid submission within the stipulated timeline,” the judgment said.

 

The bench further observed that the company’s allegation regarding an error in bid value or net worth validation was neither conclusively corroborated nor disproved by the logs generated by the operator of the e-bidding platform.  

In response to the order, GEEC said, “We are reviewing the Order with our lawyers and will take the appropriate legal recourse as advised."