Ritika Singh Sisodiya/TNN
Lucknow: A Lucknow bench of Allahabad high court has upheld the rejection of Larsen & Toubro Ltd’s technical bid for the Jewar Airport-Ganga Expressway link project, holding that the company was ineligible to bid as it was under a govt debarment on the bid due date.A division bench of justices Shekhar B Saraf and Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary dismissed L&T’s petition challenging the Sep 25 decision of the UP Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) declaring its bid non-responsive.The court held that as per the tender document, an entity barred by the Centre, state govt or an entity controlled by them from participating in projects was ineligible to submit a bid if the bar continued on the bid due date. The bid due date was Sep 7. The court noted that L&T was debarred by the UP Jal Jeevan Mission on April 13 and the order was still in force on Sep 7. The debarment was kept in abeyance only on Sep 14, seven days after the bid due date.The bench held that an order keeping a debarment in abeyance operates prospectively and does not erase the debarment for the period preceding it.The court also rejected the argument that L&T’s declaration regarding absence of catastrophic structural or highway failure satisfied the tender requirements. It said the two clauses served different purposes—one concerned technical capability while the other was a threshold eligibility condition.L&T had argued that its quoted price was around Rs 252 crore lower than that of the lowest bidder. The court, however, held that a lower quote could not confer a right on an otherwise ineligible bidder to have its financial bid considered.The bench noted that L&T disclosed the UP debarment only after UPEIDA sought clarification during the evaluation process. The court said the company had been given an opportunity to respond before its bid was rejected.Holding that the decision of the technical evaluation committee as neither arbitrary nor irrational, the court dismissed the writ petition but clarified that the judgment would not prevent L&T from pursuing remedies against the debarment orders before the competent forums.
