M/S Mobile Caterers Welfare ... vs The Union Of India Through The Secretary on 27 February, 2024
21. What can be culled out from the afore-quoted
judgments is the limited scope the writ court has of judicial review
of the tender process or the decision-making process. The rationale
behind issuance of Commercial Circular No. 24/2023 has been
suitably explained in the objectives as well as in the counter
affidavit and the impugned Circular is based on sound reasoning
and such administrative action does not espouse any arbitrariness.
The policy is aimed at benefiting a large section of passengers by
providing them with good quality hygienic food. In these modern
times upgrading the facilities in the trains and making endeavour
to provide good quality food prepared at standard kitchens
supervised by IRCTC are laudable exercise initiated by the
respondents which will ultimately benefit the travellers in the
trains. The act of the respondents in issuance of Commercial
Circular No. 24/2023 does not suffer from any arbitrariness or
unreasonableness and was not designed to exclude the petitioners
and bestow favour on someone. The exclusion of Joint Venture
/Consortium in the addendum is also as per the policy decision of
the respondents and though learned Senior Counsel for the
petitioner has referred to Commercial Circular No. 29/2023 but
the same relates to a pilot project of Yatri Seva Anubandh (YSA)
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and it encompasses several facilities which has to be ensured by
the service provider. The pilot project operating in a separate
domain cannot be taken to be a benchmark to question the action
of the respondents and term it as arbitrary. The questions which
were formulated in the case of "Michigan Rubber (India) Limited
versus State of Karnataka and Others" (supra) and which has been
quoted above is answered in the negative. This Court in exercise of
the powers of writ jurisdiction as repeatedly stated above has a
limited jurisdiction of exercising its powers of judicial review and
since the Commercial Circular No. 24/2023 does not indicate any
arbitrariness in the action of the respondents, we refrain from
entertaining this writ application and consequently the same is
hereby dismissed.