The petitioner's lack of locus standi due to not fulfilling the technical qualification criteria and gross delay in approaching the court led to the dismissal of the writ petition.

S.P. Wangdi, J.

1. By filing this writ petition the Petitioner, inter alia, seeks for a writ of mandamus for quashing the work order filed as Annexure-P7 by which the Respondent No. 3 was awarded the construction work of Sidkeong Tulku Bird Park at Rabdentse, West Sikkim, estimated at Rs. 5,29,68,000/- (Rupees five crores twenty nine lakhs and sixty eight thousand) and for a direction for retender of the said work by giving wide and sufficient publicity. It is the case of the Petitioner that he is a registered contractor of Class 1(A) category under the Government of Sikkim in the West District and was, therefore, qualified to bid for the aforesaid contract work. The gravamen of the Petitioner's case is that the Notice Inviting Tender (in short 'NIT') in respect of the work was not given the adequate publicity in order to enable wider participation in the tender process by all contractors possessing the requisite eligibility criteria. It is further the case of the Petitioner that due to inadequacy in the extent of circulation of the NIT it was only in the last week of January, 2009 that he got to learn of the NIT having been published, the tender process being completed and the fact that the Respondent No. 3 as the successful tenderer was on the verge of being issued with the work order. It is his further case that when necessary enquiries made by him and his colleagues did not result in satisfactory explanation from the concerned officers and engineers they issued a legal notice to Respondent No. 1 on 28-1-2009 requesting him not to proceed further with the issuance of the work order to the Respondent No. 3 till such time the tender notice of the work in question was given wide and sufficient publicity. It is further stated that in the reply to the aforesaid legal notice on behalf of the Respondent No. 1 the allegation as regards the insufficiency of and /or want of wider publicity of tender notice had been denied and that in the reply of the Respondent No. 2, it had been disclosed that vide letter bearing No. 225 dated 23-12-2008, a copy of which had been enclosed with the legal notice, the Respondent No. 1 had requested for publication of the NIT in the "Sikkim Herald" and in two issues of any two prominent local newspapers having wide circulation in Sikkim, and the Respondent No. 2 had accordingly published it in "Samay Dainik" in its issue of 1-1-2009 and "Sikkim Express" in its issue of 2-1-2009.

2. It is alleged by the Petitioner that publication of the NIT as stated by the Respondent Nos. 1 and 2 appeared to be doubtful as two leading newspaper vendors in Gangtok gave written certificates to him stating that those days, i.e., 1-1-2009 and 2-1-2009, being holidays no newspapers had been received by them for sale or distribution. It is alleged that the Petitioner and his two colleagues replied to the Respondent No. 1 through their lawyer requesting not to proceed further with the issuance of the work order to the Respondent No. 3 on account of the NIT not having been given wide and sufficient publicity depriving the other eligible contractors including the Petitioner from their right to participate in the tender process. It is stated further that on 10-3-2009 the Petitioner and his colleagues sought from the concerned authority of the State Government information under the Right to Information Act, 2005 as regards the procedure followed in the publication of the NIT and the award of the aforesaid work. In response thereto the Respondent No. 1 allowed his colleague one Shri Tej Bahadur Rawat to inspect the records of the work in question and to make out copies of the documents inspected by him. The Petitioner states that it was only after the inspection that he learnt of the following defects in the tender process:

(a) Only three tenders had been received from the entire West District where there were not less than fifty class 1(A) Government contractors;

(b) The rates quoted by the three tenderers were much on the highe