JUDGMENT :

Vineet Saran, J.

In response to the tender call notice floated by opp. party-Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation (for short, ‘Corporation’) on 09.04.2015 inviting tender from Level-II Handling & Transport Contractors for certain work for the years 2015-16 and 2016-17, the petitioner and opp. parties 5 and 6 had applied. The admitted position is that the last date for receipt of the tender was 22.04.2015. The technical bid was to be opened on the same date and the price bid was to be opened on 23.04.2015. The petitioner as well as opp. parties 5 and 6 and others had qualified in the technical bid and the price bid was to be opened on 23.04.2015. As per condition no.5, the workable rate was to be determined by the District Tender Committee after scrutiny of the technical bid and was to be disclosed to the successful tenderers who had qualified in the technical bid on the day of opening of the price bid, before the price bid was opened. In compliance with the said condition, the workable rate was disclosed to the participants of Binka Block on 23.04.2015, prior to opening of the price bid of the tenderers who had qualified in the technical bid. The workable rate as disclosed was 33.21 and the rate after 10% deduction came to 29.89. The bid of the petitioner was for 29.94. After considering the price bids of all the nine tenderers who were found eligible in the technical bid, the District Tender Committee of the Corporation, on 23.04.2015, approved and selected the petitioner for being given the contract of Binka Unit of the Corporation. Then on 01.06.2015, which is more than a month after the finalization of the tender process, the Tender Committee gave a fresh report with regard to the workable rate and changed the same from 33.21 to 34.33 and found that after the change of the workable rate none of the technically qualified bidders were eligible under the price bid, as the price ought to be within 10% of the workable rate. Opp. parties 5 and 6 had also given their bids and were found to be disqualified. However, the District Tender Committee vide its report dated 01.06.2015, after holding that the petitioner as well as opp. parties 5 and 6 had become disqualified, as the rate quoted by them was below 10% of the workable rate, resolved to tag Binka Unit to the selected tenderers of the nearby Block/Unit, Dunguripali and consequently opp. parties 5 and 6 were engaged as contractors.

2. The submission of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that after the opening of the financial bid, the workable rate could not have been changed as the specific clause 5.3 of the tender document provided that the workable rates were to be disclosed prior to opening of the price bid and the same having been done so on 23.04.2015, and thereafter on opening of the price bid the petitioner having been found to be qualified and his tender approved, there was no occasion for the opp. party-Corporation or the District Tender Committee to change the workable rate on 01.06.2015.

3. In our view, the submission of the learned counsel for the petitioner has force. The conditions in the tender document have to be complied with, which were initially complied with by the opp. party- Corporation, but for the reasons best known, the same were changed inasmuch as the workable rate, which was an essential component of the tender, was changed more than a month after opening of the price bid and finalization of the tender.

4. In Kanhaiya Lal Agrawal v. Union of India and others, AIR 2002 SC 2766, the apex Court held as follows:

“Court is normally reluctant to intervene in matters of entering into contracts by the Govt. but if the same is found to be unreasonable, arbitrary, mala fide or is in disregard of mandatory procedures it will not hesitate to nullify or rectify such actions.”

As it appears in the present case that the authority has acted unreasonably, arbitrarily and in utter disregard to mandatory procedure laid down in the tender documents, there