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2. It is commonly alleged in both the writ petitions that eligibility conditions of the tender were tailor-made to suit the 9th respondent and to substantiate this allegation, motives have been attributed to the 11th respondent/Mr.Narayanan, the then Executive Director of AAI. It has also been alleged that the lead member, Novia International, neither had five years experience in ground handling nor a turn over of Rs.200 crore and that Bhadra International was selected at a time when one of its sister companies had outstanding dues of Rs.36 crores with AAI for an advertisement contract and TDI International, which owed the money to AAI and Bhadra International were both floated by the 10th respondent/Mr.Prem Bajaj.
3. Respondents 2,13 and 14 have stoutly denied the allegations of the petitioners. They have specifically averred and argued that M/s.TDI International India Limited was not a participant in the global tenders invited for Ground Handling invited by the AAI and in terms of the eligibility criteria laid down in the Notice inviting tenders, the lead member alone will be evaluated pursuant to the eligibility criteria and in the instant case, M/s.TDI International India Limited is a separate legal entity carrying out advertisement business and M/s.Bhadra International India Limited is a Joint Venture Consortium partner along with M/s.Novia International Consulting APS of Denmark and none of the consortium partners are having any dues payable to the Airports Authority of India. It is also their specific stand that as on 9.9.2009, the date of award of the tender, M/s.TDI International India Limited had a total clear dues of approximately Rs.36.85 crores and as against this, AAI was holding irrevocable Bank Guarantees in its absolute favour for Rs.46.24 crores to secure the said dues. Thus, at the point of time of award of contract, the Bank Guarantees obtained from TDI International India Limited and other concessionaires are in excess of the total dues of the respective concessionaires, to ensure that there is adequate security for the dues payable to AAI and AAI has taken appropriate steps periodically to recover the dues and that M/s.TDI International India Limited had paid part payments periodically. They have also specifically denied the allegation of the petitioners that after accumulating dues, the promoter of M/s.TDI International India Limited had floated another company, namely, M/s.Bhadra International India Limited to bag the contract since from the Certificate of Incorporation, it is seen that M/s.Bhadra International is an existing company, incorporated way back in the year 2000, while the tenders were called only in 2009.
10. From the materials placed on record, we have seen that the above said TDI International India Limited was an advertising concessionaire of AAI and a non traffic revenue generator for AAI for quite a long time and they, by their communication dated 27.9.2012, have paid a sum of Rs.61,85,11,918/= towards full and final settlement of their dues as on 31.7.2012.
11. As a matter of fact, it is to be pointed out that the object of the petitioner in W.P.No.28303 of 2010, filed as PIL, appears to stall the taking over of the airport ground handling work by R.9 at the last minute. We arrived at this conclusion, given the fact that the contract for ground handling operations was awarded to R.9, by the letter dated 9.9.2009, pursuant to a public tender and security clearances were granted by Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, by their letters dated 23.4.2010 and 26.5.2010 in May, 2010, but the petitioner waited till the end of December, 2010 for filing the present writ petition, since, the petitioner knew well that R.9 was to commence the ground handling activities by 1.1.2011.