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A Delhi High Court bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh stayed the bidding process of State run buses till 18th January 2022 on a plea filed by Tata Motors Limited challenging the rejection of manual bids despite having submitted the requisite documents already.
The bidding process was for operation of 450 buses under the government's cluster scheme.

Gopal Jain, Senior Advocate, appearing for Tata Motors mentioned the matter for urgent listing on 22nd December and the matter was accordingly listed for hearing on 24th December. He submitted that the tender required the submission of online bids on the e-procurement portal and that the online bid was submitted on time. He further submitted that all the documents had already been submitted on the portal in digital version and that merely because there was a delay in submission of hard copies, Tata Motors should not be disqualified from the bidding process.

The court on hearing his submissions noted that it was inclined to hear the issue if delay in manual submission of documents would result in disqualification of Tata Motors from the bidding process if a valid online bid has been duly submitted on time.

It is to be noted that court also recorded an undertaking from the Government of Delhi that the contract will not be awarded to any bidder till the next dated of hearing ie. 18th January 2022.

Jain was briefed by a team of lawyers from Karanjawala & Co comprising of Nandini Gore, Sr Partner, Aditi Bhatt, Neha Khandelwal,  Raghvendra Pratap Singh and Karanveer Singh.

Cause title: Tata Motors Ltd Vs GNCT Delhi