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Informist, Monday, Feb. 10, 2025

 

--SC junks Vedanta's plea for preferred bidder award for Goa iron ore mine

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Monday rejected a petition by Vedanta Ltd. seeking directions to the state of Goa and the Director of Mines and Geology to issue the preferred bidder award and subsequent letter of intent to the company for the iron ore mining lease in Curpem and Sulcorna Mineral Block-XI. 

 

Vedanta had challenged the decision of the Directorate of Mines and Geology to allow further bidding in the auction of an iron ore mining lease in Curpem and Sulcorna Mineral Block-XI in South Goa, after it had admittedly emerged as the highest bidder. This is not a fit case for interference considering the finding of the Bombay High Court, said the apex court. 

 

Vedanta said the action of the Directorate of Mines and Geology was at the behest of Agravanshi Pvt. Ltd., also a bidder in the auction, who claimed to have encountered a "server error" during the 8-minute period afforded to it to better the bid of the petitioner. The claim of Agravanshi was expressly and unambiguously rejected by MSTC Pvt. Ltd., the e-platform on which the bidding, as well as the e-auctions for other mines, was being simultaneously conducted. 

 

However, in a "clear volte face", MSTC on the mere saying of Agravanshi curiously claimed "due to some unforeseen reason/intermittent issue, the error screen as shared was thrown to the bidder from our server end." Unfortunately, the Directorate of Mines and Geology has, based on MSTC's view, decided to resume the e-auction, said Vedanta. Directorate of Mines and Geology is allowing Agravanshi to improve on the petitioner's bid, though there is no objective, cogent or scientific data put forward by the MSTC to admit to an error at its end, said Vedanta.

 

On Nov. 14, the e-auction process for the Curpem and Sulcorna Mineral Block-XI took place. During the bidding process, Agravanshi encountered a server error on the MSTC portal at 2302 IST. Agravanshi could access the site at 23:08 hours to find that the auction was over.  

 

On Nov. 19, the technical evaluation committee of Directorate of Mines and Geology held a meeting to take a suitable decision pertaining to the ascending forward e-auction process for the mineral block. Decisions by the members made were to allow resumption auction for Curpem and Sulcorna Mineral Block– XI, the date of resumption auction to be kept on Jan. 22, and notice for the same to be uploaded on the website of MSTC.

 

On Nov. 20, the petitioner inwarded a letter to the Directorate of Mines and Geology requesting for issuance of preferred bidder award and letter of intent for the mineral block. Aggrieved by the non-declaration of the petitioner as the highest bidder, Vedanta filed a petition in the high court, which got rejected last week.

 

The high court had said that the decision of the state of Goa in resuming the auction does not suffer from any arbitrariness, not was it unreasonable. The decision does not in any manner depart from the terms of notice inviting tender, said the court. 

 

On Monday, shares of Vedanta ended 4.4% lower at INR 435.80 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

 

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