JUDGMENT :

1. Writ-C No. 6210 of 2022 (M/S M/S Rhetoric Technologies Pvt. Ltd Thru. Authorised Representative And Another vs. State Of U.P. Thru.Prin.Secy.Transport Sectt. And 6 Others is taken along with Writ-C No. 6534 of 2022 (M/S Rosmerta Technologies Ltd. Lucknow Thru. Its Authorized Signatory vs. State Of U.P. Thru. Prin. Secy. Transport Secrt.) as both the writ petitions challenge the same decision taken by the State Government on almost same grounds.

2. The challenge in the writ petitions is to the minutes of the meeting dated 23.06.2022 and also to the publication of results dated 27.07.2022/28.07.2022 to the extent that it qualifies and includes the name of the Consortium of respondent nos. 5, 6 & 7. A further prayer has been made for a direction to the respondent nos. 1 to 4 to proceed with the tender in terms of the recommendations of the Bid Evaluation Committee which was constituted by the Transport Commissioner, copy of whose recommendations were sent by the Transport Commissioner to the State Government for approval.

3. When the Writ-C No. 6210 of 2022 was filed, this Court was pleased to pass a detailed interim order on 12.09.2022 which is being quoted hereinbelow:-

"Sri Vivek Kumar Rai, Advocate has put in appearance on behalf of respondent Nos. 5, 6 and 7.

The instant matter pertains to award of tender for work related to Inspection and Certification (I&C) of the commercial vehicles for the purpose of certification of their road worthiness.

Learned Senior Advocate, Sri Jaideep Narain Mathur, assisted by Sri Aakash Prasad, Shantanoo Saxena and Sri Amitav Singh, learned counsel representing the petitioners has submitted that the respondent No.5, who is the lead member of consortion selected as the lowest bidder, had not submitted RFB with the bid documents though "bid documents", as defined in Clause 1(iii) of the definition clause of the General Conditions of Contract, means certain documents to be prepared by the bidder under the contract "in addition to the RFB". He has further drawn our attention to the minutes of the Technical Bid Evaluation Committee which after evaluation of the technical bid of participating the bidders had clearly found respondent No.5 not to be technically qualified whereas the said Committee has found the petitioners to be qualified. It is also the argument of the Sri Mathur that as per the terms and conditions any recommendation made by the Technical Committee ought to have been considered by the Commissioner, Transport, U.P. and not by the State Government. He has also drawn our attention to the minutes of the meeting held under the Chairmanship of the Principal Secretary, Transport, a perusal of which reveals that after the recommendation of the Technical Bid Evaluation Committee regarding technical bid of all the participants which was held on 03.06.2022, some representation dated 05.06.2022 was made by the respondent No.5 and it is in the light of the said representation that the matter was considered again by a Committee headed by the Principal Secretary, Transport Department. It has further been argued by Sri Mathur that the recommendation made by the Technical Bid Evaluation Committee, vide its decision taken in the meeting held on 03.06.2022 was yet to be considered by the Transport Commissioner and the said recommendation was never published and thus, it is intriguing as to how this information was leaked to the petitioners which allowed him to make representation dated 05.06.2022. According to the petitioners, the entire bidding process was to be kept confidential and in the instant case the confidentiality has, thus, been breached.

Let instructions on the aforesaid as also on all the issues involved in the writ petition be obtained by the learned State Counsel by tomorrow i.e. 13.09.2022.

List/put up this case tomorrow i.e. 13.09.2022.

We have been informed that pursuant to the completion of the bid process, Letter of Award (LoA) has not yet been received by the responde