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Maharashtra Housing Development Authority v. Shapoorji Pallonji & Company Private Limited & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2018 INSC 134Decided 12 Feb 2018
Civil Appeal No. 1836 of 2018
Justice Ranjan Gogoi · Justice R. Banumathi

Background

MHADA floated an e-tender for a redevelopment project, with online bids due by a fixed deadline. The respondent, Shapoorji Pallonji & Company, claimed it had uploaded its technical and financial bid and pressed the "freeze button" just before the deadline but never received an acknowledgment, whereas the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which built and maintained the e-tendering portal, found no technical glitch and said the bidder itself had failed to complete the submission process. The Bombay High Court had directed NIC and MHADA to retrieve and treat the respondent's bid as valid, prompting MHADA's appeal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court directed NIC to file an affidavit on whether the respondent's bid data could still be retrieved; NIC's sworn response was that the data could not be retrieved by NIC or MHADA, jointly or severally, under the prevailing e-tendering system and government guidelines, and that the bid had failed only because the bidder never pressed the mandatory "freeze button," with no server problem on the relevant date (427 other bids were successfully uploaded in the same window). Weighing NIC's authoritative, on-affidavit technical position against the respondent's own consultant's opinion that retrieval was possible, the Court found the latter unpersuasive, especially since the respondent had ample time to seek NIC's help after not receiving an acknowledgment and had used the same e-tendering system before. The Court held the High Court's directions effectively gave the respondent an impermissible "second opportunity" to participate despite its own incomplete submission, set aside those directions, and allowed MHADA's appeal.

Lesson Learnt

In online government tenders, a bidder who fails to complete a mandatory final step (like confirming/"freezing" a submission) bears the consequences of that omission; courts will defer to the technical system-operator's sworn findings on data retrievability rather than a party's own expert opinion, and will not direct a second chance that was not available to other compliant bidders.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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