Shanti Construction Pvt. Ltd. Vs State Of Odisha & Ors. (Supreme Court of India)
What is the meaning of “previous financial year” in relation to interpretation for the purposes of other Statutes?
This judgement will be helpful in relation to arbitrariness in state action as well as in relation to interpretation of statues across various Acts.
The Hon’ble Supreme Court in this case was dealing with a matter relating to award of tender in Orissa for sand mining where the tender of the highest bidder was rejected by interpreting the meaning of “previous financial year” to mean the financials of an year for which the due date of filing of return u/s 139 had not expired and thus the action of the highest bidder in submitting the financials for the year earlier to the aforesaid year was held to be violative of tender conditions even though his bid was highest and the contract was awarded to the another bidder whose bid was lower.
The Orissa High court while approving the action of the State government, directed the awardee of the tender to match the bid of the highest bidder. Thus, both the unsuccessful and successful bidders were before the Supreme Court.
