Chandigarh, August 31
Acting on petitions challenging revised Punjab Foodgrains Transportation Policy-2022 and Punjab Food Grains Labour Policy-2022, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today recorded the state counsel’s submission on maintenance of status quo in the matter. The Bench also ordered that third party rights would not be created in the matter.
The direction by the Bench of Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli would mean that the existing tenders/agreements, valid up to December 31, would not be terminated automatically with the allotment of a new tender.
The petitioners — labour, cartage and transportation contractors of foodgrains in the mandis — were among other things seeking the quashing of the labour policy dated August 26 to the extent that it automatically cancelled the tenders already awarded and agreements already entered into “when a new tender for the same purpose was allotted”.
The petitioner’s case was that the respondent-state vide the revised policy inserted a provision whereby unilaterally the agreement/contract/tender awarded to the petitioners would stand cancelled if a new tender for the same purpose was allotted. “The provision is violative of the basic principles of natural justice which categorically provides that everyone should be given an opportunity of hearing before passing of any adverse order. In the present case neither has any show-cause notice been issued to the petitioners, nor any opportunity of hearing has been granted to them which violates the basic canons of natural justice,” it was contended.
The petitioners were, among others, represented by senior counsel DS Patwalia, Chetan Mittal, Gurminder Singh and Gaurav Chopra with Anurag Chopra, Gauravjit Singh Patwalia and Kunal Mulwani. Going into the background of the matter, the petitioners submitted that the valid contracts awarded to them through e-tender process were subsisting till December 31 and they had invested huge amounts. Besides this, there were no complaints.
But departments concerned firstly issued revised guidelines on August 26 followed by the policy after the change of the government. In pursuance to the policies, the respondent-state issued a notice of a detailed time-table for calling tender and its finalisation. The entire process from the publication of the advertisement to the finalisation of the bids was to be completed between August 27 and September 20.
Petition of contractors
The petitioners — labour, cartage and transportation contractors of foodgrain in the mandis — were among other things seeking the quashing of the labour policy dated August 26 to the extent that it automatically cancelled the tenders already awarded and agreements already entered into “when a new tender for the same purpose was allotted”.