4 months ago
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The Madras High Court connected Monday stayed each further proceedings with respect to the grant of tender for operation of a 4 lane elevated corridor from Tiruvanmiyur to Uthandi, on the East Coast Road (ECR), successful Chennai and for widening the ECR to six lanes with paved shoulders.
Justice P.T. Asha granted the interim enactment till January 27 pursuant to a writ petition filed by Bhopal based Dilip Buildcon Limited accusing the Tamil Nadu State Highways Authority (TANSHA) of having shown favouritism successful awarding the declaration to Hyderabad based KNR Constructions Limited.
Senior counsel C. Manishankar, assisted by M. Ashwin Kumar, told the justice the petitioner company, founded successful 1987, had executed assorted projects specified arsenic the Gorakpur nexus Expressway, Banglore-Nidagatta six-laning work, Chandikhole-Bhadrak six laning and besides built the Zuari span implicit Zurari River successful Goa.
It had made a gross turnover of ₹10,348 crore successful 2023-24, ₹8,765 crore successful 2024-25 and its nett worthy was astir ₹5,400 crore. Hence, the institution had participated successful a tender invited by TANSHA connected August 25, 2025 for the ECR task and submitted its method bid arsenic good arsenic fiscal bid done online mode.
However, connected December 24, 2025, the tender inviting authorization of TANSHA rejected the method bid of the petitioner institution without assigning immoderate reason, the elder counsel said and claimed KNR Constructions was declared arsenic the palmy bidder aft aggregate extensions of the past day for submitting the bids.
Alleging the palmy bidder had been blacklisted by the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways successful May 2025 owed to illness of definite sections of National Highway-66 successful Kerala, the petitioner institution claimed TANSHA had extended the clip bounds lone to assistance clip for KNR Constructions to resoluteness the issue.
The petitioner company, successful its affidavit, stated the TANSHA had initially fixed October 23, 2025 arsenic the past day for submission of bids. However, the deadline was archetypal extended to November 6, 2025; past to November 12, 2025 and erstwhile again to November 17, 2025 by citing administrative and method reasons.
“This alteration of dates... though styled arsenic administrative reasons, intelligibly demonstrates the factum that the aforesaid was done lone to springiness preferential attraction to the 4th responsive (KNR Constructions). It ipso facto smacks arbitrariness and malafides connected the portion of the authoritative respondents and it is evident that determination are different governmental forces which are moving successful favour of the 4th responsive herein,” the affidavit read.
After proceeding the arguments precocious by Mr. Manishankar connected behalf of the petitioner, the justice granted clip till January 27 for Additional Government Pleader V. Jeevagiridharan to get instructions and stayed the tender proceedings till then.
