- (1.) Petitioner seeks special leave to appeal to this Court from the order dated 17th February, 1993 of the Kerala High Court dismissing the petitioner's Writ Appeal No. 280 of 1993. Special leave granted.
(2.) Appellant is stated to be a firm of partners carrying on business as painting contractors. The appellant was on the list of eight qualified painting-contractors on the panel prepared by the respondent-Public Sector Undertaking. Appellant's name was stated to be deleted from the list of. qualified contractors on account of what is stated to be a Vigilance Report. Consequently, the respondent did not issue the tender form for the work of 'Anti-Corrosive Coating of the Prilling Tower' of urea plant in its factory to the appellant.
(3.) Before its name was deleted from the list of qualified contractors, appellant was not notified of the reason for the deletion. The tender forms were issued to the remaining seven contractors, out of whom only two submitted their quotations and one of them was issued the work order on 6th January, 1993. The appellant aggrieved by the discriminatory treatment filed a writ petition in the High Court of Kerala. The petition was filed on 19th January, 1993. The learned single Judge of the High Court has dismissed the writ petition. The Division Bench dismissed the appellant's appeal, and observed: "Admittedly, following the procedure laid down in para 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 in regard to pre-qualification (as set out in the counter-affidavit of the first respondent) the appellant's name was included in the list of contractors. Initially it was included in a list of 12 contractors as provided in the said rules and subsequently the appellant's name was included in another list of 8 contractors consequent to the approval thereof by the Executive Director (Operation). The tender forms were issued on 1-6-1992 to the other seven parties, but not to the appellant." "A reading of the counter-affidavit and the reply affidavit will disclose that there was enough relevant material before the FACT for taking a decision not to issue any tender form to the appellant, including the material relating to the inflated measurements given by the appellant in relation to one of the previous contracts." ;