TATA Motors Approaches Bombay High Court Over Disqualification In Electric Bus Tender Process

A division bench of Justices Nitin Sambre and Anil Pansare directed BEST to submit its reply in the plea challenging the disqualification.

Tata Motors claimed that BEST erroneously labelled their bid as "technically non-responsive" on May 5, 2022 for allegedly deviating from tender specifications.

Mr. Mustafa Doctor, Senior Advocate instructed by Karanjawala & Co and Lexicon for Tata Motors Ltd, submitted before the court that the company's bid was in conformity with the conditions of the Tender despite which it was disqualified.

Tata has said in its petition that the company is providing a guarantee of operating range of the electric buses as 200 Kms for Single Decker buses (SD) with 80% State of Charge (SoC) without any interruption, the Company's technical bid was "arbitrarily" rejected.

Tata Motors' case that this has been done to unfairly favour another bidder, Evey Trans Pvt Ltd.

According to Tata Motors, in the same decision BEST has relaxed the conditions of Tender, selectively for Evey Trans by allowing opportunity charging time of 1 hour (i.e. interruption) as sought by it and declared its bid as "technically responsive".

Further, the Respondent No.1 (BEST) waived the requirement of matching of rates provided in Section 2 of Schedule II (Evaluation of Bids and Matching of bids) for the benefit of Respondent No. 2(Evey Tans).

The plea says the action of BEST is unreasonable,disproportionate, arbitrary, discriminatory and violative of Article 14 and 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution of India.

Mr Sharan Jagtyani, Senior Advocate appeared for BEST and Mr Percy Pardiwal, Senior Advocate along with Mr Rohaan Cama, Advocate appeared for Evey Trans Pvt Ltd.

The Court will hear the matter next on 23rd May, 2022 after the replies are filed.