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4. On 26.2.2015, the Technical Evaluation Committee, after taking into account the opinion of the Labour Department, arrived at a minimum wage figure of Rs.3,00,92,346/-. Inasmuch as both the Appellant as well as Respondent No.1 gave bids which were below this figure, (which would, therefore, be less than the amount required as minimum wages, in accordance with the tender conditions read with the Annexure 2 thereof), both the Appellant as well as Respondent No.1 were held to be ineligible. A decision was, therefore, taken to award the tender to the third bidder, namely, M/s Airan Consultants Pvt. Ltd. Respondent No.1 approached the Gujarat High Court in a writ petition challenging the aforesaid decision. By its judgment dated 11.8.2015, the High Court ultimately came to the conclusion that the tender in favour of M/s Airan Consultants Pvt. Ltd. ought to be quashed and set aside with the further direction that the Government of Gujarat shall give an opportunity to all three tenderers to resubmit their bids after being appraised of the minimum wage figure given by the Labour Department. This was done as the High Court was of the opinion that all the bidders ought to have been given an opportunity to revise their bills subsequent to the minimum wage calculated by the Labour Department.

9. Petition is disposed of.”

9. Being aggrieved by the aforesaid judgment, the Appellant is before us.

10. Shri Harin Raval, learned senior advocate appearing on behalf of the Appellant, has pointedly referred to the tender conditions and has argued before us that Respondent No.1’s writ petition was not at all maintainable in view of the fact that Respondent No.1 stuck to its earlier offer of Rs.2,77,68,000/- which was lower than the figure of Rs.3,00,92,346/- as well as the figure of Rs.2,91,00,000/- fixed by the Government upon advice given by the Labour Department, of minimum wage plus bonus. According to him, the without prejudice offer of Rs.3,00,92,346/- flew in the face of the tender conditions and, therefore, the writ petition being not maintainable, ought to have been dismissed both on the ground that the figure quoted by Respondent No.1 was below the minimum wage fixed as also on the ground that no open ended bid is liable to be entertained. He further argued that the Court cannot make a contract between the parties by treating the offer of the Respondent No.1 as matched with the revised minimum wage calculation. He further argued that a Mandamus cannot be issued to straightaway award the tender to a person who does not conform to the essential conditions of the tender.

12. Having heard learned counsel for the parties, we agree with Shri Raval’s contention that Respondent No.1’s bid was contrary to the terms of the tender.

13. First and foremost, under tender condition 2.5.5, commercial bids have to strictly conform to the format provided in Annexure 2 of the tender document. Annexure 2 which contains the format for the price bid makes it clear that the salary paid to deployed manpower should not be less than the minimum wage. It further goes on to state in paragraph 3 thereof that if the component of salary quoted is less than the minimum wage prescribed, the bid is liable to be rejected. On this ground alone, Respondent No.1‘s bid is liable to be rejected inasmuch as, vide its letter dated 3.9.2015, Respondent No.1 stuck to its original figure of Rs.2,77,68,000/- which is way below the minimum wage fixed by the Government. Secondly, Shri Raval is also right in stating that the without prejudice offer of Rs.3,00,92,346/-

21. We have seen that the present tender has not gotten off the ground since May 2015, and one year’s precious time has been wasted due to litigation between the parties. We must hasten to add that the Government of Gujarat is partly to blame for this inasmuch as it arrived at a minimum wage figure and did not disclose the same to the tendering parties twice. Even in the second round of litigation, the Government did not disclose the newly arrived at minimum wage figure of Rs.2,91,00,000/- to the two persons in the fray before us. Ordinarily, therefore, we would have asked the Government to disclose the second figure of minimum wage and restart the tendering process. However, we do not think that the justice of the case requires us to do so, for two reasons. First and foremost, Respondent No.1 before us has clearly violated the strict terms of the tender condition on every occasion and hence cannot be given relief. And, secondly, we already find that due to litigation the present tender has not taken off for over one year. In the absence of malafides, and indeed the High Court judgment has found that malafides did not vitiate the calculation of minimum wage by the Labour Department, we cannot accept Shri Divan’s submission that the figure of Rs.2,91,00,000/- was tailor made to suit the bid offered by the Appellant herein. We, therefore, set aside the decision of the Gujarat High Court and allow the Government to proceed further in finalizing the tender in favour of the Appellant herein. The appeal is, accordingly, allowed with no order as to costs.