The court upheld the public authority's right to split contracts and emphasized that acceptance of work by tenderers at offered rates indicates agreement with procurement terms.

1. Parties by counsel. Rule. Heard forthwith. The Petitioner challenges in this writ petition the work Order / Letter of Intent / awarding of a Contract in favour of the respondent No. 2 in respect of the part of the work which was notified as per the Tender Notice dated 13-1-1993. He has also claimed that the Tender given by the respondent No. 2 should be declared as invalid and that it should be declared that the petitioner is entitled to the whole of the contract work notified as per the aforesaid Tender Notice dated 13-1-1993.

2. The facts are that the respondent No. 1 Maharashtra State Electricity Board (for short 'the Board') issued a Tender Notice published in the issue of the Daily Newspaper "Hitvada" dated 13th January, 1993, according to which the offers were invited for liasion work including supervision of loading, quantity, quality and movement of coal by rail system for a period of 12 months. The estimated cost of such Tender work was Rs. 2,70,00,000/- approximately. The Tender document had to be in the prescribed proforma and was supplied on payment to the interested parties from 25th January, 1993 to 4th February, 1993. The last date for submission of Tender Documents was 9-2-1993 upto 14.00 hours. The tenders were to be opened on 9-2-1993 at 14.30 hours.

3. The petitioner, which is a Private Limited Company as well as the respondent No. 2 which is a Public Limited Company submitted their tender documents to the Chief Engineer (Gen. T.F. and C), M.S.E.B., Nagpur amongst others. The Petitioner by his tender document has quoted the rate of 0.61 as per. MT for the whole of the contract work described in the Tender Notice. Perusal of its Tender document does not show that it wanted to make or claim any deviation from any of the terms and conditions of the Tender nor does it show that for part of the work a separate rate is quoted by it.

4. As regards the Tender document of the respondent No. 2, it shows that the rate quoted by it for the whole of the contract work is 0.65 Ps per MT. It is pertinent to see that in Annexure - F of the Tender Document of the respondent No. 2 which is a deviation sheet and is in a prescribed proforma, the respondent No. 2 has stated that its offer quoted 0.65 Paise per MT for the total scope of the Tender work is valid only if the total contract is exclusively awarded to it. It has further stated in the said Annexure - F that if the contract work to be awarded to it is in part or is to be shared with more than one Contractor, its rate will stand enhanced to' Rs. 0.85 Ps per MT or whatever is the rate at which the contract work is finalised for other contractors. It is then stated that there are no other technical / commercial deviations, other than those stated above. Since para 2 of the above deviation sheet is material for the purpose of this petition, it is reproduced below for ready reference.
"(2) "Should the contract be awarded to us in part or to be shared with more than one Contractor, our rate will stand enhanced to Rs. 0.80 paise per M. T. or whatever is the rate at which the contract work is finalised for other contractors."

5. After the tenders were opened, the respondent No. 1 found that there were four valid tenders out of which one was of the petitioner and another of the respondent No. 2. The respondent No. 1 also found that the rate quoted by the petitioner was the lowest. After scrutinising the tender documents, the respondent No. 1 decided to divide the contract - work between the petitioner and the respondent No. 2. Accordingly, by its work order dated 16-2-1993, it offered part of the contract work to the petitioner upon the te