The court emphasized the importance of considering the petitioner's detailed reply before passing a debarment order, in line with judicial pronouncements.

JUDGMENT :

(Arun Kumar Jha, J.)

Heard learned counsel for the petitioner and learned counsel for the respondents.

2. In the instant petition, the petitioner is challenging the order contained in memo no.5163 dated 01.12.2015 issued by the Chief Engineer, Bihar Police Building Construction Corporation (hereinafter referred as ‘Corporation’) whereby and whereunder the petitioner has been debarred from participating in any future tender of the Corporation due to non-completion of Bihar Police Academy, Rajgir.

3. Brief facts of the case, according to the petitioner, are that the Corporation floated a tender for construction of Bihar Police Academy (Administrative etc., Civil, Electrical, PHED and other works including Green Building related works) at Rajgir. Pursuant to the said advertisement, the petitioner participated in the said tender process and he was declared successful. Accordingly, the aforesaid work was allotted to the petitioner and the agreement was executed between the petitioner and the Corporation for execution of aforesaid work on 15.02.2012. The work commencement order was also issued by Executive Engineer on 15.02.2012 itself. As per the aforesaid agreement, the completion period of the work was 30 months and the completion date was 14.08.2014. There happened to be some non-cooperation on the part of the respondent authorities and they were not acting as per the terms of the agreement, the work could not be completed and the contract period was also coming to an end, the petitioner by filing an application dated 01.08.2014 prayed for extension of time mentioning all the issues in details. Thereafter, on 08.01.2015 under the supervision of Chief Engineer of the Corporation, the work was supervised and concurrence was given for approval of time extension, but the respondent authority did not adhere to the aforesaid decision and approval. As the extension of time was not given, the petitioner vide letter dated 04.03.2015 made request to the Chief Engineer of the Corporation for extension of time till 14.08.2015. Pursuant to the said letter, the Corporation vide letter dated 20.03.2015 granted the extension of time to the petitioner to complete the work before 14.08.2015. When the work was in progress and the petitioner was facing several problems in execution of works, he made several requests to the respondent authorities but they were paying no heed. All of a sudden, the Chief Engineer vide letter no. 4844 dated 03.11.2015 issued show-cause notice to the petitioner as to why he be not debarred from future tender and also to terminate the contract agreement. Further the Executive Engineer vide letter no. 1043 dated 06.11.2015 issued show-cause notice to the petitioner as to why in terms of Clause 3 of the contract agreement, steps should not taken to terminate the agreement. Pursuant to the aforesaid notices, the petitioner filed his show-cause reply vide letter dated 19.11.2015 giving the details of the problems which it was facing in execution of the work. At the same time, it also made request to grant him extension of time for further 12 months so that the work may be completed. But surprisingly the petitioner received an order contained in memo no. 5163 dated 01.12.2015 (Annexure 1) by which the Chief Engineer of the Corporation debarred him from participating in future tender till completion of the work. Thereafter, the petitioner vide letters dated 10.12.2015 and 21.12.2015 addressed to the Chief Engineer of the Corporation made a detailed representations mentioning all the facts and requested him to recall the debarment order, but the respondent authorities did not accede to the request. Being aggrieved, the petitioner filed the present Writ.

4. The learned counsel for the petitioner submitted that there is no provision in the agreement or any other law which empowers the Respondent authority to debar the petitioner from participating in future tender. The learned counsel further submitted that there is a s