respondent no. 8. He has referred to the provisions of Section 52[1][a], Section 53[1], Section 81[a], Section 83[1] and Section 109[6] of the Assam Panchayat Act, 1994 and Rule 47 of the Assam Panchayat [Financial] Rules, 2002 [‘the Rules, 2002’, for short], to submit that ‘the yearly sale value’, mentioned in the Tender Notice, is not the criteria to determine whether the order of settlement in respect of a market is to be passed by the concerned Anchalik Panchayat or the concerned Zilla Parishad. If the bid value offered by any one bidder or more is/are more than Rs. 1,00,000/-, then the power of examination and final acceptance of such tenders shall be vested in the General Standing Committee constituted under Section 81[a] of the Assam Panchayat Act, 1994. Even in a case where the bid value offered by the highest valid bidder is less than Rs. 1,00,000/- per year the General Standing Committee of the Anchalik Panchayat though has the power to examine and accept the bid of the highest eligible bidder but it is obligated to forward the entire matter to the jurisdictional Zilla Parishad for confirmation. In the case in hand, it was the Naoboicha Anchalik Panchayat who had passed the final order of settlement in favour of the respondent no. 8, without seeking confirmation from the Lakhimpur Zilla Parishad. It is the further submission of Mr. Deka that the General Standing Committee of the Naoboicha Anchalik Panchayat in its meeting held on 29.06.2022, considered irrelevant factors and ignored relevant factors to declare the bids of the bidders whose bid values were higher than the respondent no. 8, as non-compliant. He has submitted as an example that one of the grounds for rejection of the bid of the petitioner no. 1 is that the fixed deposit deposited by the petitioner no. 1 was pledged in favour of the Zilla Parishad instead of the Anchalik Panchayat.
