Bombay High Court (DB: Alok Aradhe, CJ and M. S. Karnik, J.; judgment per M. S. Karnik, J.), Writ Petition No.11893 of 2024, decided 26 March 2025 — Ten firms/companies formed by Project Affected Persons (PAPs) engaged in housekeeping, cleaning, sweeping and sanitation services challenged CIDCO's Notice Inviting Bid dated 3 August 2024, floated in the open category for the remaining 8 of 31 rail-station sanitation tenders after non-PAP entities objected to the PAP-exclusive 11 March 2024 notice, and specifically attacked Clause Nos.10.a, 10.b and 10.c as arbitrary. Held, disposing of the petition: (i) no policy document existed on record granting PAPs preference or exclusivity in such contracts, and CIDCO emphatically denied the existence of any such policy on which the petition was founded; (ii) the petitioners failed to establish any right to contract award merely because they are PAPs — the two-decade preference for PAP entities in non-specialised works, together with land compensation and the 12.5% developed-plot scheme, was a compassionate measure, not a source of exclusive rights; (iii) the petitioners, most of whom already held one or two awarded tenders, could not monopolise all sanitation tenders across Navi Mumbai rail corridors; (iv) in the challenged tender PAP entities remained free to participate but had to compete with non-PAP entities, and the broadened experience eligibility (ports, airports, bus terminus, PSUs, government/public sector premises) was neither irrational nor arbitrary; (v) condition 10.a, which figured in the earlier 11 March 2024 tender of which the petitioners were beneficiaries, could not be challenged now as inconvenient; conditions 10.b and 10.c were anti-monopolistic and misconceived challenges; (vi) applying the settled principle that the author of the tender is the best judge of eligibility conditions, avoiding concentration of work in few hands is not arbitrary; no interference warranted under Article 226. CIDCO undertook to give due weightage to the 6 December 2021 note clause (L1 tie — preference to CIDCO PAP bidder) in future tenders. No costs.
