The Calcutta High Court has held that the Port Trust, under the guise of “extending” the tender, cannot reopen or continue a completed e-auction process in a manner that effectively changed the rules of the game after the process had commenced and after the Court had already ruled on the consequences of the bidder’s technical glitch. The Court reaffirmed that, once the earlier judgment had held that it was for the Port Trust either to proceed on the bid received or to cancel the tender, the authorities could not adopt a third course by extending the auction with altered leased area and revised base price so as to permit renewed bidding among the same parties.
The decision to conduct the extended e-auction was therefore held to be legally unsustainable. The High Court therefore quashed the Port Trust’s communication dated 24 June 2026 by which the extended e-auction had been proposed.
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A Single Judge Bench of Justice Krishna Rao noted that, in the earlier judgment dated 23 April 2026, it had already recorded that the technical glitch was at the bidder’s end, not at the end of the auction platform, and that respondent no. 4 had regained access at 22:45 hours while the bidding window remained open till 22:49:34 hours, yet did not place any further bid. The earlier judgment had also held that the respondents had accepted the bid amount and that it was for the Port Trust either to issue the allotment order to the successful bidder or to take a decision to cancel the tender process if it found difficulty in accepting the bid amount.
The Bench further observed that, after that judgment, the Port Trust negotiated with the petitioners, revised the plot area from 48,258 sq. metres to 44,790 sq. metres, revised the annual rent from Rs. 4,45,10,628 to Rs. 4,72,67,214, and obtained the petitioners’ unconditional acceptance on 2 June 2026, but did not disclose this fact to the Appellate Court on 8 June 2026.
The Bench examined the Port Trust’s reliance on Clause 5(h), which reserved a right to “cancel or reject or accept or withdraw or extend the tender,” and contrasted it with Clause 5(b), which stated that no bid would be accepted after the closing time, and Clause 12, which provided only a limited automatic extension mechanism where a bid is submitted within eight minutes of the scheduled closing time.
The Bench held that using Clause 5(h) in the present case to reopen bidding after the auction had already concluded would amount to changing the position earlier taken by MSTC and would also ignore the findings in the earlier judgment. The Bench also found that the Port Trust had taken a contrary view by altering the leased area and base price and then extending the e-auction among the same qualified bidders, effectively allowing respondent no. 4 to re-enter the same tender process despite the earlier rejection of such relief.
Briefly, the present case is the second round of litigation concerning the same e-tender for grant of a 30-year long-term lease of land inside the CME Compound at 8, Garden Reach Road, Kolkata, issued on 5 November 2025. In the earlier round, respondent no. 4 had challenged its inability to continue bidding in the live e-auction on 26 March 2026 after 10:40 p.m., claiming that it had suffered a technical glitch. That petition was dismissed on 23 April 2026, and the Appellate Court, while refusing to interfere, left it to the Port Trust to decide the fate of the bidding process in accordance with law.
Thereafter, on 24 June 2026, the Port Trust issued the impugned communication deciding to continue the earlier e-auction by conducting an extended e-auction on 29 June 2026 among the techno-commercially qualified bidders, with a revised leased area of 44,790 sq. metres and a revised base price of Rs. 4,72,67,214 per annum. The petitioners challenged that decision, contending that the original auction had already concluded and that they were the highest bidder.
