KALYAN JYOTI SENGUPTA, J.

( 1 ) THE Courts : In this writ petition the petitioner has challenged the decision of the West Bengal State Electricity Board being the respondent No. 1 (hereinafter referred to as Board) rejected the tender submitted by the writ petitioner. The dispute in real sense in this matter is not so much as the subject matter of the writ petition is, which relates to works in Purulia Pump Storage Project, Lot-4.

( 2 ) THE fact of this case in short is as follows:-THE petitioner after having been declared successful in pre-qualified stage for inviting tender submitted bids both on Techno Commercial and Price pursuant to invitation of the Board dated 24th November, 1997 for entering into contract for execution of Main Civil Works in Purulia Pump Storage Project along with other participants. The entire work was sub-divided into several schedules. Schedule C related to works to be done on the Lower dam. The petitioner's bid on Techno Commercial aspect was declared by the Board to be substantially responsive. The initial bids of all the participants on price aspect were ignored and they were asked to submit revised price bid for the works which was then sub-divided into 14 Schedules and marked 'a' to 'n'. So, according to the instruction of the Board the petitioner along with other participants submitted revised price bid. However, on detection of mistake the Board informed all the three bidders, that the same was to be rectified and accordingly corrigendum/addendum was issued. Therefore, necessary amendment of the Bill of Quantity was incorporated.

( 3 ) ON 8th September, 1999 the petitioner submitted its price bid to the Board comprising of the following documents:- (I)five sets of Volume 1 (Revised in April 1999), (ii)five sets of Volume 1a-1 Chapter 5, Revised BOQ, (iii)original revised diskette supplied by the Board, (iv)a separate diskette containing the Bill of Quantities with all the columns including unit prices and the amounts filled up, and (v)five Bound Volumes containing print out of the Bill of Quantities made from the diskette of Skanska along with other supporting documents.

( 4 ) ON 8th September, 1999 it was noticed that the petitioner submitted two copies of the details regarding sub-schedule C-3 and a copy of sub-schedule C-2 was inadvertently omitted. But, according to the petitioner, the diskette contained entire Bill of Quantity including missed out sub-schedule C-2 and was complete in all respects. So the petitioner by a letter dated 17th September, 1999 supplied the missing sub-schedule C-2 to the Board and it was received by the Project Manager of the Board without any objection. In the said letter the Board was informed that the diskette contained complete Bill of Quantities including sub-schedule C-2 and was complete in all respects. The petitioner wrote another letter dated 23rd December, 1999 requesting the Board to confirm the revised price bid is in order, but no reply was given to the same. The petitioner was not informed of the decision on the bid until on 15th January, 2000 when it came across a news item published in the Economic Times stating that the Board had rejected the bid of Skanska as non-responsive. So another letter dated 11th March, 2000 was sent, through the learned Advocate, by the petitioner. No reply was given. Hence the present writ petition was filed on 21st March, 2000. On 27th March, 2000 in Court at the time of hearing the Board informed their decision that the price bid of the petitioner was declared to be non-responsive but the decision was not communicated formally to the petitioner. On 3rd April, 2000 by a letter pursuant to the order passed by Justice Bhattacharya on this writ petition the Board informed reasons for holding the revised bid of Skanska being non-responsive and liable to be rejected.

( 5 ) MR. Kapoor, learned Senior Advocate, appearing in support of the petition contends highlighting the aforesaid fact that decision of rejection by th

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