SC rejects Tata Motors’ plea against BEST

New Delhi/ Mumbai: Tata Motors., has lost its plea against Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST), Mumbai’s civic transport body over the tender of 2100 E- Buses worth of 2450 cr. The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the plea of Tata Motors against BEST in rejection of their tender on “arbitrary grounds”.

BEST had mentioned the minimum operating Km of the buses offered in single charge to be 200 Km, for SD buses respectively with 80% SoC. 8 players along with Tata Motors had their bid placed. It is noted that BEST had rejected the pre bid points of range testing condition as per AIS040/ FAME II.

Tata Motors however had submitted their technical bid where the specified conditions were achieved in standard test conditions as per AIS040. This is a deviation from the Tender specifications.

On the other hand EVEY, the operational arm of Olectra Greentech Ltd had submitted their bid provided in the specifications as prescribed in the tender document achieving 200km in a single charge with 80% SoC at actual conditions.

Here actual conditions refers to the road, driving, seated capacity etc., which made Tata Motors along with four other makers “Technically non- responsive”. Thus their bid was rejected.

On the other hand on the results of the bid results declared EVEY to be the L1 bidder. The price of Tata Motors quoted was not opened in accordance to the Sr. No. 7 of the Schedule I (Invitation for Proposal) and Sr. No. 15 of the Schedule II (Definitions and Instructions to Tenderers) of the Tender document.

"The contracts entered into between private parties are not subject to scrutiny under writ jurisdiction. No doubt, the bodies which are State within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution are bound to act fairly and are amenable to the writ jurisdiction of superior courts but this discretionary power must be exercised with a great deal of restraint and caution," the bench said.

The plea was thus rejected on the grounds that Tata Motors in its bid deviated from this requirement and had informed BEST that it could carry the operating range in the 'standard test conditions' which was not in accordance with the tender conditions.

The top court also remarked that the high court having once declared Tata Motors as non-responsive and having been disqualified from the tender process should not have entered into the fray of investigating into the decision of Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) to declare Evey Trans Pvt. Ltd. as the eligible bidder.