CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Wednesday upheld a `329- crore tender notification issued by the Tamil Nadu government for the supply of LED street-light fittings with their complete sets and five-year warranty.
The Division Bench comprising Justice Huluvadi G Ramesh and Justice RMT Teekaa Raman dismissed the PIL that was seeking to quash certain conditions of tender notices for supply of these 20-W LED street-lights. The PIL was filed by C Karthikeyan, a member of the Federation of Anti Corruption Team India.
The petitioner said that the imposition of certain conditions was biased and against the welfare of the public. However, the court dismissed these concerns. It said that the government had made certain amendments to the conditions imposed in the earlier tender notification as a response to the difficulties faced in replacing tubelights with LED lights during the first phase of project implementation. This, the bench said, had resulted in the issuance of the current tender notification.
The clauses that were being contended by the petitioner were about how there was no necessity for the respondents to send samples for testing at the field by the Electrical Department after submitting test reports from a NABL-accredited laboratory. Further, Karthikeyan expressed that the clause demanding that the bidder submit proof for having completed similar type of work of not less than 50% of the bid value was ‘without application of mind.’
“We do not see any arbitrariness in the imposition of conditions in Clauses 3(4) and 3(5) of the conditions or any mala fide intention on part of respondent authorities to favour a particular person nor we see any element of bias or unreasonableness in the notification, except that imposition of such a condition is only to ensure that the scheme is implemented without any difficulty,” the bench said.