1. What is the purpose of getting the school text books printed? The common man may feel nonplussed by such a question and answer the obvious that text books were meant to be read by school children. In this litigation this simple and self-evident truth appears to have been overlooked by everyone, unfortunately including this court, and this case seems to suggest that the object of getting text books printed was that a handful of private printers and contractors may make their profits.

2. The Bihar State Text Book Publishing Corporation (hereinafter referred to as the Corporation) issued a tender notice inviting nationwide bids for printing of over seventy five lacs volumes of books in different subjects for classes 1 to 7, described in the 25 schedules of the tender notice. The books were intended to be supplied to the girl students and children belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the academic session 2001, commencing from January and ending on December, 2001. There arose a dispute between the petitioner firm, one of the bidders, and the Corporation over the Corporations refusal to give to the petitioner the contract for printing of books under seven different schedules of the tender notice, in respect of which the petitioner was the lowest bidder. The petitioners brought the dispute to this court by filing this writ petition on 14.5.2001 and for the past three and half months this matter has lingered on in this court. At one stage, an interim order was passed restraining the Corporation from accepting the supplies of any printed books in pursuance of the tender notice in question. Unfortunately, the interim order was couched in the widest terms and it forbade the supply of books to the Corporation even under those schedules of the tender notice which were never in dispute in this litigation. On 13.8.2001 when the interim order was passed no one showed sufficient responsibility to point out to the court that the dispute was in respect of only seven schedules and there was no occasion for the court to pass an order restraining the Corporation from accepting supplies of books even under those 18 schedules of the tender notice which were not in dispute in this case. This position could only be rectified when the case was taken up for hearing for its final disposal on 30.8.2001 and then this court modified and clarified the interim order of stay passed earlier.

3. During the past three decades a substantial amount of case law has accumulated on the question of award of government contracts and a lawyer with sufficient skills may without difficulty press into service certain observations from the earlier decisions in any dispute relating to the award of government contracts. But while hearing learned arguments from the counsel appearing for the parties I was unable to keep out of my mind for a moment the fact that the contract in dispute was for printing of school text books for the academic year 2001 and though two out of the three parts of the year is already over, the school children are yet to receive the books intended for them. While lengthy arguments were advanced on the plea of upholding the rights of the individual and much reliance was placed on a number of Supreme Court decisions, I was unable to relinguish (sic) the thought that the contract for printing of school text books for a particular academic year was basically different from and could not be viewed in the same way as a contract for ten years for extraction of resin from forests [Kasturi Lal; (1980) 4 SCC 1] or the contract for the supply of fresh milk for the Military Farms [Harminder Singh Arora; (1986) 3 SCC 247] or the contract for allotment of damaged stocks of rice (Food Corporation of India; A.I.R. 1993 SC 1601) or the grant of licence for the operation of Cellular Mobile Telephone Service [Tata Cellular, A.I.R. 1996 SC 11] or the contract for publication of telephone directories of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (Sterli