HC refuses interim relief to UK start-up disqualified by BEST

The petitioner company, which is a part of a three-member consortium, claimed that the BEST wrongly declared its bid to be “technically non-responsive” and sought urgent relief. Representing the petitioner, senior advocate SU Kamdar told a vacation bench of Justice Anil K Menon and Justice Nitin R Borkar last week that the respondent, BEST, after having invited bids for supply of 1,400 electric buses to Mumbai region, had considered technical qualifications and compliance of various bidders. Five out of eight bids were rejected since the bidders were disqualified as “technically non-responsive”.

Kamdar said that the petitioner firm sought urgent relief from the HC, due to the “hasty approach” of the respondent undertaking and believes that a “letter of acceptance” was to be issued at any time, which would result in the plea being rendered infructuous.

The Causis-E-Mobility claimed that the consortium had complied with “mandatory technical and commercial eligibility criteria” in the tender.

It said that one of the members of the consortium, Canada-based Golden Properties Limited, had told the BEST that electric buses of their partner Eurabus GmbH had been successfully running in various cities across the globe.

Kamdar added that Golden Properties has the capacity to produce more than 1,500 buses a year and they have an electric bus manufacturing facility across Europe and India which could be treated as compliance with the eligibility criteria.

The court noted that the Golden Properties, in another letter on May 5, claimed that it had supplied more than 100 buses to Almaty Transport Services, Kazakhstan government, of the 500 that had been ordered, whereas the party had on March 28 contended that it had received an order for 200 buses from the Kazakhstan government .

“Prima facie, these contradictions are not explained,” the bench noted.

The court noted that the eligibility criteria indicated that at least one of the members of the consortium should have an electric bus manufacturing facility in India and have a production capacity of a minimum of 1,000 electric buses and should have delivered 100 buses or 1,000 CNG or High Speed Diesel (HSD) buses in the last five years.

“Admittedly, the present consortium of which the petitioner is one member, does not comply with any of the above requirements,” the bench observed. The petitioner firm then argued that it has an arrangement with one Azad Coach Private Limited in Rajasthan, which has an experience of manufacturing and delivering 1,317 HSD buses in India.

“In our view, any arrangement with Azad Coach Pvt. Ltd. will not qualify as compliance with condition of the Technical and Commercial Eligibility Criteria since Azad Coach Pvt. Ltd. is not one of the members of the consortium. Thus, prima facie, we find that there is no case to grant any ad-interim relief. Hence, ad-interim relief is refused,” the HC held, saying that the petition can be listed before the regular bench in due course.

Meanwhile, another bench of the HC, on March 17, had sought BEST’s response to a similar plea by another bidder, Tata Motors Limited, which challenged the May 6 decision of disqualifying its bid and had scheduled further hearing on May 23.