The Supreme Court has reprimanded the Gwalior Municipal Corporation (GMC) for adopting an arbitrary approach, while afloating tenders for the supply, installation, testing, commissioning and maintenance of lifts under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.
The Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh passed the order on an application filed by Omega Elevators challenging the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s Gwalior Bench order, which refused to entertain its writ petition on the matter.
The top court of the country observed that GMC’s move to exclude Indian firms from the tender process and permit only multinational brands to submit bids for the project, purportedly to ensure quality assurance, suggested a belief that the Indian brands were inherently incapable of competing with multinational corporations or providing comparable services.
All 10 companies flagged by GMC as eligible in the NIT were multi-national corporations, based outside India. This fact clearly indicated that GMC ostensibly believed that a company’s status as a global entity ipso facto conferred on it the requisite repute and expertise necessary to undertake the specified works., it added.