In a writ petition filed before the Delhi High Court to challenge the eligibility criteria for an E-Tender issued by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC) for operation of the executive lounge at Platform 1, Pune Railway Station, to the extent that the said criteria excludes Railway Lounge operators from participating in the bidding process, a Division Bench of Justice V. Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora refused to entertain the petition.
The petitioner sought a direction upon IRCTC to amend the Technical Eligibility Criteria to include operators having experience in operation and management of Railway Executive Lounges. IRCTC submitted a comparison of the technical criteria prescribed by it in the tenders issued by it for its Executive Lounges in 2017, 2022, and 2024 as well as in the present tender.
From the comparison, the Court found that for the year 2017, 2022, and 2024, operators of Executive Lounges at Railway Stations were permitted to participate, and the impugned tender was the first time that IRCTC had excluded the operators of Railway Executive Lounges.
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The Court noted that IRCTC agreed to amend the tender criteria and include the operators of Executive Lounges at Railway Stations. However, the petitioner submitted that the proposed amendment was too broad-based as it would permit the operators of Executive Lounges at Railway Stations across the board, without any limitation to NSG-1 stations. The petitioners prayed for an amendment to the experience criteria of 5 years to be reduced to 3 years to match the petitioner’s existing experience. The Court stated that the petitioner’s submissions were beyond the grounds raised in the present petition.
The Court found no ground to limit the participation criteria only to the operators of the Executive Lounges at Railway Stations of NSG-1 Stations or reduce the experience criteria from 5 years to 3 years. It was opined that any directions passed at the behest of the petitioner would lead to the mistake of making the bid tailor-made to accommodate the petitioner, which was impermissible in law.
Hence, since the petitioner was arguing beyond the reliefs prayed for and was not satisfied even if the relief prayed for was granted, the Court refused to interfere with the criteria set down by IRCTC. The Court noted the petitioner’s submission that it would remain ineligible to participate in the bidding process even if the tender conditions were modified, and stated that this implied that the petitioner lacked the locus standi to challenge the impugned tender.
Thus, the Court refused to entertain the petition but the legal issue as to whether IRCTC could exclude operators of Executive Lounges at railway stations was left open to be decided in a case where the petitioner therein is directly affected.
