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Vaishnorani Mahila Bachat Gat v. State of Maharashtra & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2019 INSC 278Decided 26 Feb 2019
Civil Appeal No. 2336 of 2019
Justice Arun Mishra · Justice Deepak Gupta

Background

Women's self-help groups (Mahila Mandals) challenged a 2016 Maharashtra government tender notice for supplying "ready to cook" nutritional food to Anganwadi (childcare) centres under the ICDS scheme. They argued the tender's technical and financial conditions (such as requiring large turnover and automated extrusion-technology production) were deliberately designed to favour big corporate contractors over genuine local women's groups, contrary to earlier Supreme Court orders that had directed that such nutrition supply be decentralised to self-help groups rather than contractors.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court traced a long history of its own orders (in the PUCL case) directing that contractors not be used for supplying Anganwadi nutrition, and found that the Maharashtra tender's conditions, especially requiring 25% of a district's total annual turnover as a financial-capacity threshold, amounting to crores of rupees, effectively excluded small women's self-help groups and favoured large industrial players. It held these conditions were not in keeping with the spirit of the Court's earlier orders or the Government of India's own policy, and directed Maharashtra to float a fresh tender within four weeks that genuinely enabled self-help groups to participate, further suggesting that supply units be organised at a smaller (panchayat-level) scale rather than district-wide so smaller groups are not squeezed out. The appeals and writ petition were accordingly disposed of, with the State restrained from continuing the earlier contractor-based arrangement in the interim.

Lesson Learnt

Government welfare schemes meant to benefit grassroots community groups cannot have tender conditions that are, in substance, designed to hand the business to large corporates instead: courts will strike down such conditions as defeating the scheme's real purpose.

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

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