The main legal point established in the judgment is that the experience and expertise of a partner in a partnership firm can be considered as the experience of the firm for the purpose of evaluating the firm's eligibility for a bid.

S.J. VAZIFDAR, J.

1. The petitioner, a partnership firm, has sought a writ of certiorari to quash the official respondents’ decision dated 01.04.2016 rejecting their tender. The petitioner has also sought an order declaring Clause-24 of a policy, issued by the official respondents, as null and void. Lastly, contending that its bid was the most competitive, the petitioner has sought the consequential relief directing the respondents to allot it the work in question.

2. The petitioner is a partnership firm. The respondents invited tenders. Clause-24 of the policy stipulates that to qualify for the technical bid, the tenderer must have in his name experience of two years in transportation of food-grains. The question that falls for consideration is whether the experience of a partner of the petitioner-firm can be considered to be the experience of the firm. We have answered the question in the affirmative both on principal and on precedent. The judgment of the Supreme Court in M/s New Horizons Limited and another vs. Union of India and others, 1995 (1) SCC 478, in our opinion, answers the question conclusively in favour of the petitioner.

3. The petitioner is a partnership firm registered on 21.01.2016 under the Indian Partnership Act, 1932. The petitioner’s partners are one Danial Masih and one Satprit Singh Bedi. Respondent No.2, on 11.03.2016, issued a tender notice regarding the work of all the purchase agencies of the State of Punjab, such as, PUNGRAIN, MARKFED, PUNSUP, Punjab State Warehousing Corporation, Punjab Agro Foodgrains Corporation and FCI for the contract period 01.04.2016 to 31.03.2017 (Rabi and Kharid Season) involving the transportation of products and stock articles and labour for storage centers/cartage and labour for the godown of P.E.G. E-tenders were invited for the said work. Clause-5 of the tender notice provided that the contractor must fulfil the technical qualifications as per the technical bid policy.

Respondent No.2 had published, on 24.03.2016, a similar tender notice for the same work and for the same period.

4. The dispute in this writ petition concerns the interpretation of Clause-24 of the policy which, admittedly, governs the rights of the parties. The translation of Clause-24, as accepted by the parties, in so far as it is relevant, reads as under:-

“24. The qualifications for the Technical Bid of a Transport Contractors in of all (sic) the districts shall be as follows:-

(iii) The tenderer must hold in his name an experience of two years in transportation of food grains and the experience certificate must be in the format as annexed as Annexure ‘B’ which must be certified by the District Manager of the concerned Agency. In respect of the above mentioned experience, the tenderer shall present before the District Tender Allotment Committee proof of Turnover in one year that shall be based on last year’s actual arrival of food grains in the cluster of Mandis.”

S. No.	Arrival in the Mandies lying within the cluster	Requisite Minimum Turnover/Experience
1.	0 to 5000 Tonnes	Rs. 10,00,000
2.	5001 to 10000 Tonnes	Rs. 20,00,000
3.	10001 to 20000 Tonnes	Rs. 40,00,000
4.	20001 to 30000 Tonnes	Rs. 60,00,000
5.	30001 to 40000 Tonnes	Rs. 80,00,000
6.	40001 to 50000 Tonnes	Rs. 1,00,000,00
7.	50001 to 75000 Tonnes	Rs. 2,00,000,00
8.	75001 to 100000 Tonnes	Rs. 3,00,000,00
9.	More than 100000 Tonnes	Rs. 4,00,000,00

5. The petitioner alleges that although its bid was the lowest, the contract was wrongly awarded in favour of respondents No.5 and 6-private respondents. The Tender Evaluation Committee rejected the petitioner’s technical bid for the reasons recorded in the proceedings of 01.04.2016. The minutes record that the tenders were opened in the presence of the Deputy Director, the District Manager of the agency, othe