IMPORTANT POINT
Discretion exercised by the authorities, if not perverse, cannot be interfered with.

JUDGMENT

Altamas Kabir, J. —

1. Leave granted.

2. The Appellant is a Public Limited Company which claims to have an annual turnover of almost Rs.750 crores and has been carrying out large scale infrastructure projects for various State Governments in India, including Maharashtra and Bihar, where bio-metrics of millions of people are required to be collected to ensure identification of the population which is targeted as beneficiaries of various Government Welfare Schemes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. The Appellant Company has been holding ISO 9001:2000 Certificate for the highest quality standards in respect of the services rendered by it. The Appellant Company claims to have carried out a pilot project in respect of 10 shops in the State Government Public Distribution System in Bhopal.

3. On 12th December, 2009, the Government of Madhya Pradesh in the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, hereinafter referred to as “FCS”, issued a Request for Proposal, hereinafter referred to as “RFP”, for the appointment of a vendor for District Mechanism for Public Distribution System, hereinafter referred to as “PDS”. The last date for submission of bids was 7th January, 2010, which was subsequently extended till 17th February, 2010.

4. The RFP, as it stood at the time when the bids were invited, included Section 3.1 which, inter alia, provides that the bidder/one partner in the consortium must possess a valid certification in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM level 3 or above). In addition, the bidder/all partners of consortium (in case of consortium) should have an active (valid at least till June, 2010) ISO 9001:2000 certificate which had to be submitted as qualifying documents.

5. Subsequently, on 18th January, 2010, the pre-qualification (Eligibility Criteria) provided in the RFP was changed and the corrigendum, as far as it relates to Section 3.1, was amended so that the bidder/one partner in the consortium had to possess a valid certification in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM level 3 or above). In case of consortium, the partner developing the software application should have CMM level 3 certification and the bidder/lead partners of the consortium (in case of consortium, should have an active (valid at least till June, 2010) ISO 9001:2000 certification at the time of submission of the bid. The documents to be submitted along with the bid remained the same. Vide the corrigendum dated 18th January, 2010, Section 7 which provided for the Bidder Check List, was also altered. Prior to its amendment, Section 7.1.1 provided that the Company/one partner in the consortium (in case of consortium) should have an active ISO 9001:2000 certification at the time of submission of the bid, and it was also provided that a copy of the Quality Certificate or documentation of the quality policy were required to be provided along with the bid document. It was also submitted that in case the certificate was issued for renewal, the bidder should ensure that the renewed certificate was made available at the time of signing of the contract. It was mentioned that in case the same was not provided, the Department may consider initiating the Award of the contract with the second lowest bidder. The criteria relating to the documents to be submitted as qualifying documents included a copy of the quality certificate/documentation of quality policy. The corrigendum dated 18th January, 2010, amended the said provision to indicate that the bidder/one partner in the consortium must possess a valid certification in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM level 3 or above), in case of consortium the partner developing the software application was required to have CMM level 3 certification. It was further stated that the bidder/lead partners of the consortium (in case of consortium) should have an active (valid at least till June, 2010) ISO 9001:2000 certification at the time of the submission of the bid. The documents to