The 3% reservation for women entrepreneurs in public procurement is directory, not mandatory, and is applied annually across all tenders; courts will not interfere with tender awards absent arbitrariness or mala fide.

Judgment

(Judgment of the Court was delivered by R.Suresh Kumar J.)

This intra Court appeal has been directed against the order passed by the Writ Court dated 06.08.2025 made in W.P.No.38746 of 2024.

2. In fact the impugned order was a common order passed in four writ petitions. The present one is one among the four. The issue raised before the Writ Court was that, a tender for transportation of crude oil and other allied products of the respondent Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) was floated. The appellant / writ petitioner, her husband and the third respondent were among the applicants who applied for the said tender. There were totally 13 such applications and the Tender Awarding Authority viz., ONGC, awarded the tender in favour of the third respondent viz., M/s.Kamalakannan Road Transport. This awarding of the tender is mainly under challenge in the said writ petition.

3. Even before filing this writ petition, W.P.No.34553 of 2024 was filed by the very same petitioner, questioning certain conditions imposed in the tender document. Other tenderers also filed W.P.Nos.34556 of 2024 and 34559 of 2024, almost for similar relief. Therefore, all these writ petitions were heard together and disposed of by the common order dated 06.08.2025 by the Writ Court.

4. Though it is a common order passed in the said four writ petitions, the present appeal is directed against W.P.No.38746 of 2024, where, the prayer sought for by the writ petitioner / appellant was for a writ of Certiorarified Mandamus to call for the records of the award of the tender in entirety given to the respondent No.3 in Tender No.V16KC24005 vide No.KKL/CAU-ASSET/MM/2024/1364232/KKRT dated 08.11.2024 and quash the same.

5. Mainly two grounds were raised before the Writ Court and the same grounds are urged before us by Mr.Sathish Parasaran, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the appellant. The first ground is that, there has been 3% reservation for the Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) owned by women entrepreneurs for awarding such kind of tenders and here, the appellant being a women entrepreneur must have been given the benefit of 3% reservation, which they have not considered. Had it been considered, the writ petitioner / appellant being L3 would have certainly got the tender. Therefore, that was the main and prime ground raised on behalf of the appellant.

6. The other ground is that, as per the tender conditions, once the Tender Awarding Authority comes forward to award 100% capacity to a single tenderer then he must have the capacity to supply the entire 100% capacity and if there is any lacuna, either the tender can be cancelled or part of the work can be divided among the other tenderers who were L2 or L3 and even beyond that. These are the two grounds urged by the learned Senior Counsel even before the Writ Court, which were not considered, is the grievance of the appellant and therefore, urging the very same grounds, the present writ appeal has been filed.

7. We have heard Mr.Vijay Narayan, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the third respondent, who is the successful tenderer in whose favour the tender was awarded on 08.11.2024 and since then, he has been doing the work to the satisfaction of ONGC ie., the Tender Awarding Authority.

8. We have also heard Mr.AR.L.Sundaresan, learned Additional Solicitor General appearing for the respondents 1 and 2 / Tender Awarding Authority, who would submit that, insofar as the first ie., the prime ground raised by the appellant that 3% reservation provided for the MSEs owned by women entrepreneurs, which has not been followed in the present tender is concerned, he would submit that the said reservation is not mandatory, but it is only directory. Secondly, he would submit that insofar as this 3% reservation is concerned, this reservation is provided to women entrepreneurs throughout the whole year ie., that too to eligible persons who come as L1 or L2 or L3.

9. Therefore in the present case, the single tender or solitary