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Informist, Thursday, Mar. 20, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – The Delhi High Court has rejected Adani Global Air Cargo Solutions Pvt. Ltd.'s plea to cancel the tender for development of a new cargo terminal at Kolkata Airport. Adani Global had said they were excluded from participating in the bidding process for the tender on account of technical glitches, which prevented them from logging its online bid.

 

"...we are unable to accept that there was any glitch in the e-procurement portal that had prevented the petitioner from furnishing its bid on time," said the high court. The bench of Justices Vibhu Bakhru and Girish Kathpalia said that the court was unable to accept that the bidding process "falls foul of the Article 14 of the Constitution of India" or is vitiated on the ground of bias.

 

However, the court said that there was no cavil that Adani Global was a bonafide bidder and was intending to participate in the bidding process. Its efforts to upload its bid had failed due to problems encountered by it, said the court. The petitioner had continued with its attempt to resolve the error and had managed to upload several tender documents as reflected in the bid documents as furnished by National Informatics Centre. 

 

The court said that while there was no ground to interfere with the bidding process, given the limited scope of judicial review, it was necessary to clarify that Airports Authority of India Cargo Logistics and Allied Services Co. Ltd. was "not precluded, from considering that despite the petitioner's bonafide attempts, it had failed to upload its bid, and from taking an appropriate decision in its commercial interest." 

 

Adani Global's parent company is Adani Airport Holdings Ltd., which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd., the flagship company of the Adani Group.

 

In August, Airports Authority of India Cargo Logistics had issued a notice inviting e-tenders for selection of licensee for development of a new cargo terminal at Kolkata Airport on design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis. The terms and conditions for submission of the bid required the bid to be submitted by electronic mode through the web portal of Government E-market place.

 

Adani Global said it had prepared all the documents to furnish its bid and commenced the process of submitting its bid at 1620 IST on Nov. 7. The bid submission end date was 1700 IST Nov. 7. Adani Global said that the final documents were uploaded on the website at 1625 IST. The petitioner states that after uploading of documents, a green mark was shown, which indicated that uploading of the files was successful. However, when the petitioner’s official clicked on the sign and submit button, a red cross mark was shown against the first five documents, which indicated that the files had not been uploaded. 

 

Adani Global claimed that the concerned official attempted to re-upload the files, but the portal showed that there was an error which reflected that the files were found with duplicate names. The petitioner said that it re-named and re-uploaded the files, but the error re-occurred multiple times and the system did not permit the petitioner to click the submit icon button. Resultantly, the time for submission of the bid lapsed. While the petitioner was able to submit its technical bid, the financial bid was not successfully uploaded.  

 

Consequently, Adani Global moved the court and said its bid was not uploaded on account of technical glitches on the government e-market place, without any fault on the part of the petitioner. Therefore, the bidding process needs to be cancelled, said Adani Global.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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