CWP No.9968 of 2011 IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Civil Writ Petition.No.9968 of 2011 Date of decision: 31.5.2011 Satish Kumar Saini ...Petitioner Versus Union of India and others ...Respondents CORAM: HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE ADARSH KUMAR GOEL ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR.JUSTICE AJAY KUMAR MITTAL Present: Mr. P.K.Dutt, Advocate for the petitioner. Adarsh Kumar Goel, ACJ. 1. This petition seeks quashing of order dated 27.11.2010, Annexure P.4 passed by the Chief Engineer, Military Engineer Services respondent No.3 as affirmed vide order dated 12.1.2011, Annexure P.6 passed by respondent No.2 Chief Engineer, Headquarters. 2. Case of the petitioner is that it was allotted work by the Military Engineer Services and a dispute arose which is pending before the Arbitrator. The department issued further tenders in which the petitioner wanted to participate but has been disallowed from doing so by the impugned order on the ground that earlier the petitioner had defaulted. The reasons given in the impugned order, inter-alia, are:- “Therefore, further issue of tender to your firm was banned due to following reasons:- a) Despite issue of repeated notices/reminder, work was 1 CWP No.9968 of 2011 not recommended by you, therefore work was cancelled on your default all as per condition 54 of IAFW 2249, General condition of contract, forming part of the contract and thus you became liable to pay extra expenditure incurred by the Department in getting the balance work completed at your risk and cost. b) Govt. claims is yet to be settled or adjudicated upon, therefore, in case work is allotted to you by any MES formation then as per agreed condition 67 of IAFW 2249 forming part of said CA, any amount which may become due to you shall be withheld. This may delay in completion of said work and lead to further cancellation of contract. c) As per NIT and press advertisement for issue of tender being published outstanding recovery in any Govt. Department is one of the criteria on which issue of the tender is denied.” 3. We have heard learned counsel for the petitioner. 4. Learned counsel for the petitioner states that as per instructions applicable, payment could be made even during pendency of arbitration proceedings and, thus, reason given that the payment will have to be withheld is not a valid reason. 5. We are unable to interfere with the impugned order. One of the reasons given for debarring the petitioner is default by the petitioner to complete the work which led to cancellation of the work earlier allotted. In view of his track record, the debarring cannot be held to be arbitrary. Interference with the order of debarring may be called for only if the order is in violation of principles of natural justice or is otherwise irrational or arbitrary. In absence thereof, the respondents are well within their right to debar the petitioner from the process if the petitioner’s track record calls for 2 CWP No.9968 of 2011 such an action. The petition is dismissed. (Adarsh Kumar Goel) Acting Chief Justice May 31, 2011 (Ajay Kumar Mittal) ‘gs’ Judge 3