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In a case of disposal of public property, public interest ought to prevail

In Mayank Dua v. Haryana Shehari Vikas Pradhikaran and others, writ petition was filed before the High Court Of Punjab And Haryana by the Applicant in pursuance to an auction process that had been initiated by the Haryana Shehri Vikas Pradhikaran, wherein the Applicant was adjudged to the be the highest bidder.

Among the objections raised by the Applicant was that in the auction only base price for the commercial sites had been indicated whereas reserve price had been kept confidential. The Applicant claimed that non-disclosing of the reserve price, is against public interest and public policy amounting to lack of transparency in the auction process. It is contended that non-disclosure of the reserve price would also amount to an unfair practice.

The court observed that apparently the bid of the petitioner having been evaluated by the Committee that was constituted for the purpose has not accepted the same keeping in view the reserve price that may have been determined. Resultantly the ernest money stood credited back into the saving bank account of the petitioner.

The HC held that the right of the highest bidder at public auctions has been examined repeatedly by the Apex Court as also this Court and the consistent view taken is that State or the authority which can be held to be State within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution is not bound to accept the highest bid. A reference in this regard may be made to the decisions of the Honble Supreme Court in Trilochan Mishra etc. v. State of Orissa (1971) 3 SCC 153 : AIR (1971) 3 SC 733: State of Orissa v. Harinarayan Jaiswal (1972) 2 SCC 36 : AIR 1972 SC 1816 ; Union of India v. Blum Sen Walaiti Ram (sic), (1969) 3 SCC 146 : AIR 1971 SC 2295 and State of U.P. v. Vijay Bahadur Singh (1982) 2 S.C.C. 365. Same view was taken by a Division Bench of this Court in Laxmi Narain Vs., State of Haryana and another (2009) 1 RCR (Civil ) 556. 

The HC ruled that we are of the considered view that in a case of disposal of public property, the question whether the right of a person who has put in the highest bid in the public auction is to be preferred over the right of the public in ensuring that valuable public assets are not disposed of except for a fair price, public interest ought to prevail.

Comments

  1. Dubs20 December 2021 at 08:27

    The question still remains... is the reserve price to be transparently communicated in the bid socument or not?
    Dev Bhattacharya

    ReplyDelete

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