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11. Mr. Joshi has further submitted that the decision of respondent no.1 to reject the bid of the petitioner initially on the ground that it was not substantially responsive on account of multiple bid, then on the ground that the petitioner had resorted to unfair practice and finally also on the ground that there was material deviation in the bid of the petitioner whose rectification would have unfairly affected the competitive position of other bidders is absolutely unreasonable since it ignores the very nature of the error and it is contrary to conditions of the ITB, and therefore, invalid and illegal. As far as the allegation regarding multiple bidding is concerned, Mr. Joshi has submitted that in the evaluation report, respondent no.1 no.1-State has submitted that filling up the original pages of the bid documents and the addendum pages was a case of multiple bidding. This is, however, not correct. Clause 6 of ITB prescribes that there should be one bid per bidder and a bidder who submits or participates in more than one bid will cause all the proposals in which the bidder has participated to be disqualified. The form of bid is in Section 7 of Volume II of ITB. Admittedly, the petitioner has submitted only one bid and has not directly or indirectly participated in more than one bid. Therefore, there was no disqualification incurred under the said clause. Mr. Joshi has further submitted that the error of petitioner in filling up the original pages in the bid documents and the substituted pages in the addendum does not amount to multiple bidding as contemplated under Clause 6 of ITB. Making the correction would merely change the amount in the form of bid which cannot be true in every case of correction including that in the bid of respondent no.2 whose bid was corrected from Rs.99,40, 36, 488/- to Rs.99,38, 36, 989/- without considering it as multiple bidding. Mr. Joshi has further submitted that, in any case, in view of Clause 9, 11 and 19.4 of ITB an addendum modifies the bid document and the original pages are deleted, and therefore, redundant for all purposes, and there is no question of considering amounts filled in in the original pages while evaluating the bids. Mr. Joshi has further submitted that the bid of the petitioner could not have been determined to be not substantially responsive on account of multiple bidding since it is an extraneous consideration to such determination as the parameters of responsiveness are defined in Clause 28.2 of the ITB which do not include multiple bidding. Mr. Joshi has further submitted that as per Clause 6 multiple bids are to be rejected at the first stage itself and admittedly respondent no.1 who was aware of the error in the bid had not rejected the bid of the petitioner which establishes that this was an after thought.

17. Mr. Trivedi has further submitted that it was only in the month of December,2003 that responsiveness of the bids came to be finally determined and the petitioner's bid was not found substantially responsive by the consultants as per their bid evaluation report, and more particularly, owing to the following reasons:

(i) The petitioner deviated from the ordinary course of bid when it had filled up two different rates - one in original bid and another in addendum, for the very items.

(ii) The petitioner tried to manipulate when it made hand-made corrections in the original BoQs in respect of items for which addendum was issued, which amount to fraudulent practice inviting rejection of bid. (iii) The above phenomenon is also suggestive of a case of multiple bidding since the petitioner has filled in both, original pages of bid documents as well as addendum( unlike other bidders including respondent no.2) by taking recourse to a method of quoting two different rates for the very items. (iv) As per the Consultant's opinion, allowing rectification at a belated stage in case of the petitioner would affect unfairly, the competitive position of other bidders and that therefore as per Clause 28.2 (c) of ITB, petitioner's bid was rightly held to be not substantially responsive; and as per Clause 28.3, such a bid cannot substantially be made responsive by correction or withdrawal of nonconforming deviation or reservation. In this connection Mr. Trivedi has relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of West Bengal State Electricity Board vs. Patel Engineering Co.Ltd (AIR 2001 SC 682), wherein it has been held that in the case of project undertaken for the benefit of public it has to be seen that the mode of execution of the work of the project should also ensure that the public interest is best served. Tenders are invited on the basis of competitive bidding for execution of the work of the project as it serves dual purposes, on the one hand it offers a fair opportunity to all those who are interested in bidding for the contract relating to execution of work, and on the other hand it affords the authorities a choice to locate the best of the competitors on competitive price without prejudice to the quality of the work. Above all it eliminates favouritism and discrimination in awarding public works to contractors. The contract is, therefore, awarded normally to the lowest tenderer which is in public interest. The principle of awarding contract to the lowest tenderer applies when all thing s are equal. It is equally in public interest to adhere to the rules and conditions subject to which bids are invited. Merely because a bid is the lowest, the requirements of compliance of the rules and conditions cannot be ignored.

37. The whole crux of the matter or the petitioner's main trump-card in this petition is the petitioner's plea that the petitioner has offered the lowest evaluated bid price, and there was no legal or justifiable reason not to award the contract in question to the petitioner. Another strong point, according to the petitioner, in its favour is that respondent no.1-State has shifted its stand frequently for the purpose of rejecting bid of the petitioner. Initially, the ground canvassed was that the petitioner's bid was not substantially responsive on account of multiple bidding, then, unfair practice and finally material deviation in the bid as a result of rectification which would unfairly affect the competitive position of other bidders.

39. As far as the allegation regarding shifting of stand by respondent no.1-State is concerned, we are of the view that these grounds for rejection of the petitioner's bid are not in the alternative or in substitution of one another, but after considering the cumulative effect of all the three grounds, respondent no.1-State has come to the conclusion that the petitioner's bid is not the lowest evaluated bid as it suffered from the vice of multiple bidding, unfair practice and material deviations. If we look at the bidding documents, Volume II of the tender documents deal with various provisions contained in Section 7 to 11. So far as Section 7 is concerned, the same deals with form of bid through the respective signatories. Respondent no.1 has come out with the case that on microscopic scrutiny of the tender documents of all the bidders, it was found in the case of the petitioner's bid that in Clause 1 in the said form of bid, the petitioner has made categorical averment that final bid price be determined in the tendering process after taking into consideration the addendum amongst various other matters. By virtue of Clause 7, the petitioner was aware that respondent no.1 was not bound to accept the lowest or any bid which it may receive. Considering the categorical assertion of the petitioner as well as summary BoQ, it appears to us that the petitioner had quoted rates both in original bid as well as in the addendum, and thereby, it had tried to take undue advantage of the situation of its having quoted two different rates for the very items one in the original bid documents and the other in the addendum. It is also significant to note that the petitioner is the only bidder which had taken recourse to a method of quoting two different rates for the very items in contradistinction with the other bidders including respondent no.2 which had simply written " superseded by addendum" without quoting anything in those items in the original BoQ. In our opinion such an action of the petitioner, if exempted, puts the petitioner in a position where it can take undue advantage of agreeing to the rates in the original bid or in the addendum at its sweet will which would be totally unjust to other bidders. On these facts, if respondent no.1-State has come to the conclusion that the petitioner's bid was not the lowest evaluated substantially responsive bid, no infirmity can be found in such view.