The court emphasized the necessity of strict compliance with tender documentation and processes, ensuring fairness in public procurement and the evaluation of bidders' qualifications.

Judgment :

1. These D.B. Special Appeal (Writ) were preferred by appellants non-petitioners aggrieved and dissatisfied from order dated 26.05.2025 in S.B. Civil Writ Petition Nos. 7522/2025 and 7531/2025 passed by learned Single Judge of this Court.

2. The basic contention of learned AAG appearing on behalf of appellants non-petitioners is that despite reply filed by appellants non-petitioners, learned Single Judge has not considered their reply and contentions and without considering the reply and submissions, an interim order was passed to stay the work order issued in favour of respondent No.4.

3. At the request of learned AAG and learned senior advocate appearing on behalf of contesting respondent No.1-Petitioner, we are disposing off these appeals at this stage only.

4. The matter pertains to RFP and RFQ in the tender notification e-NIT/2024-2025/32573-83 dated 24.03.2025 and e-NIT-2024- 2025/32584/93 dated 24.03.2025. Both the Writ Petition Nos. 7522/2025 and 7531/2025 are still pending before learned Single Judge.

5. Learned AAG while placing reliance upon judgment in case of Rajasthan State Warehousing Cooperation Vs. Star Agriwarehousing and Collateral Management Ltd. (2021) 15 SCC 811, N.G. Projects Ltd. Vs. Vinod Kumar Jain (2022) 6 SCC 127, Ramakrishna Medical College Hospital and Research Centre Vs. State of Madhya Pradesh and Ors. (SLP (Civil) No.11785/2024, Jagdish Mandal Vs. State of Orissa (2007) 14 SCC 517 and Kanhaiya Lal Agarwal Vs. union of India (2002) 6 SCC 315 has submitted that both matters pertains to infrastructural project wherein e-NIT was issued and bidders were required to file proposal both technical and financial online as well as offline. He further submitted that in case of discrepancy, between the documents uploaded online and offline, then documents uploaded online will be given primacy. He further submitted that appellants while considering the bids have considered online documents submitted by bidders and on the basis of same has determined the criteria for qualification at technical level. He further submitted that after clearance in technical bid, the financial bids were opened and on the basis of highest bid (H-1), the approval was granted and a work order was issued to successful bidder. He further submitted that it is a public policy that the court should not interfere in the infrastructural project particularly at tender stage. At last, he submitted that without considering their submissions, learned Single Judge has passed a stay order on work order, which has created problem for department in operation of toll collection.

6. Aforesaid contentions were opposed by learned Senior Advocate appearing on behalf of respondent No.1 petitioner and submitted that initially at the time of issuance of N.I.T., the date of submission of online proposal and offline proposal were same but later realising that after submission of online proposal, the documents can be filed offline and by a corrigendum, the date of submission of offline documents was extended by one day. He further submitted that if the appellant non-petitioners intended to rely upon online documents then there was no need for them to ask for filing of offline documents. He further submitted that there is a difference in filing of documents both offline and online because only few documents were required to be submitted offline, whereas all documents are required to be filled online. He further submitted that technically, the respondent (successful bidder) was not qualified and his approval was granted only to favour him and it has violated the fundamental right of the petitioner which led to filing of the instant writ petition. He also submitted that after considering the judgment in case of Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation and Ors. Vs. Anoj Kumar Agarwal and Ors. (2020) 17 SCC 577 , Hon’ble Single Judge has granted stay on work order.

7. During course of arguments, it is submitted by learned Senior Advocate appeari