Judgment:-

S.H. Kapadia, J.

Leave granted.

2. A short question which arises for determination in these civil appeals is -whether the decision of the Bid Evaluation Committee ("EC" for short) dated 6.5.2008 rejecting the Bid Proposal made by the Consortium led by M/s Zoom Developers Pvt. Ltd. as non-admissible in terms of RFP and thus excluding the said Consortium from the zone of consideration was unjustified, arbitrary and bad in law, as held by the impugned judgment of the Kerala High Court dated 4.12.2008 in Writ Appeal No. 1460/2008.

Facts:

3. Government of Kerala (GoK) vide G.O. No. 9/07/F&PD dated 9.3.2007 decided to invite bids for the Development of International Deepwater Seaport and Container Transshipment Terminal at Vizhinjam under Public-Private Partnership. Vide G.O. dated 15.6.2007 GoK decided on the key provisions in the Request For Proposal ("RFP" for short) documents for the bidding of the above Project. A competitive bid process was thus initiated by M/s Vizhinjam International Seaport Ltd. ("VSL" for short). VSL was the Sponsor. IL & FS Infrastructure Development Corporation ("IDC" for short) was the Project Advisor. Accordingly, on 8.8.2007, Press Notification wa