Tripura HC Sets Aside Tender, Slams ‘Bangladesh Emergency’ Claim as Pretext to Favour L2 Bidder [Read Judgment]

Tripura: The Tripura High Court has held that rejecting the lowest bidder in a government tender and awarding the contract to the second-lowest bidder, without honest justification, amounts to an arbitrary and mala fide exercise of power, violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.

A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao and Justice Biswajit Palit also rejected the State’s plea that the situation in Bangladesh necessitated bypassing the lowest bidder, holding that this claim was used to draw the wool over the eyes of the Court.

The Court further ordered the blacklisting of the favoured contractor for one year and imposed costs of Rs. 50,000 on the State respondents.

The Court was hearing a writ petition filed by one Abu Sufian, a Class-1(A) government contractor from Kailashahar, Unakoti, Tripura. He had submitted the lowest bid for an embankment strengthening and anti-erosion works tender worth Rs. 6,58,53,370. Despite being the L1 bidder, the contract was awarded to the second-lowest bidder, M/s S.N. Bhattacharjee & Sons, whose quote was Rs. 83,50,207 more than the petitioner’s.

The State sought to justify its decision on multiple grounds. It questioned the petitioner’s Class-1(A) registration from Assam, claiming it was suspicious. It further contended that a national emergency had arisen due to Bangladesh raising embankments along the border near Kailashahar, threatening the local population with flooding, and that the second-lowest bidder had better resources to execute the emergency work urgently.

The Court rejected all these contentions. On eligibility, it noted that the tender did not restrict participation to contractors registered in Tripura alone, and that the petitioner’s Assam registration had been verified and confirmed as genuine by the issuing authority itself. The CPWD Rules cited to disqualify the petitioner were held to be a clear afterthought with no basis in the tender conditions.

On the Bangladesh emergency plea, the Court found it entirely hollow. The alleged situation in Bangladesh had arisen in August 2024, yet the State took no urgent action for five months before the tender was even issued. More tellingly, no flood emergency actually materialised during the monsoon of 2025, even though the favoured contractor had barely completed any work by then.

The Court also took serious note of false averments made before it. The State had initially claimed that over 50% of the work was completed within 15 days of filing its affidavit. Its own later affidavit admitted that only 36.36% was completed within the entire stipulated 90-day period. The contractor itself admitted that it had completed only 71% of the work as of February 2026, nearly eight months past the deadline, yet the State had repeatedly extended the contract without any penalty.

The Court declared the work order arbitrary, unreasonable, and the product of bias and favouritism, and held the rejection of the petitioner’s tender to be mala fide and violative of Article 14.

It directed cancellation of the work order, blacklisting of M/s S.N. Bhattacharjee & Sons for one year, and payment of Rs. 50,000 as costs to the petitioner.

Appearances:
For the Petitioners: Mr. P. Roy Barman, Sr. Advocate, Mr. Samarjit Bhattacharjee, Mr. Dipjyoti Paul, Advocates.
For the Respondents: Mr. Kohinoor N. Bhattacharyya, Government Advocate, Mrs. Pinki Chakraborty, Mr. Tanmay Debbarma, Advocates.

Case Title: Abu Sufian v. State of Tripura & Ors. (WP(C) No. 183 of 2025)

[Read Judgment]