HC dismisses plea to declare Goa iron ore mining auction results

PANAJI: The Bombay high court at Goa on Tuesday dismissed a petition against the state government’s decision to put on hold the process for online auction of south Goa’s Curpem Sulcorna iron ore mining block following a technical glitch.

The decision by a bench of justices M S Karnik and Nivedita Mehta came on a petition by mining company Vedanta which was the highest bidder when bids were closed for the auction held in November last year. The auction process was paused by the government on a complaint by another bidder Agravanshi Pvt Ltd, which said they couldn’t place bids during the online auction process due to a glitch.

“On the basis of materials on record, an expert body… after due scrutiny, has indicated that the portal was non-functional as seen from the server time and current time displayed on the screenshots which demonstrates the technical glitch preventing the respondent no. 4 (Agravanshi Pvt Ltd.) from bidding. We see no reason to doubt this finding of an expert body” the bench said.

“We are satisfied that the decision of resumption of auction from the stage when the technical glitch occurred, was taken to ensure fairness, transparency and equal opportunities to all the bidders in the auction process with an intention to earn the best possible bids/revenue to the State Government and also to avoid any unnecessary delays,” the bench added.

The high court said the ownership and control of the material resources of the community such as mineral ore should be so distributed to best sub-serve the common good. “The purpose of the auction is to get the best remunerative price by giving the bidders an opportunity to participate and to fetch higher realizable value of the material resources held by the State in trust. There cannot be a vested right in the highest bidder to be declared as the Preferred Bidder or to be given the LOI,” the court added.

Vedanta is yet to respond to a request for comment made outside business hours.

The state argued that it was well within its right to keep the auction process on hold and resume bidding with sufficient notice to all bidders to allow all bidders to participate fairly.

“Precedence has to be given to the public interest over the private interest of the Vedanta, more so when the petitioner has every opportunity to participate in the auction when it resumes. In the facts of this case, if a technical snag prevented Agravanshi Pvt Ltd from enhancing its bid and if a decision is taken to resume the auction, it cannot be said that there is any vested right of the petitioner is violated only because an opportunity of hearing was not given before a decision to resume the auction was taken,” the bench said.

Goa is currently conducting online auctions for newly designated mineral blocks after the Supreme Court in 2018 declared that all Goa’s Portuguese era mining concessions, subsequently converted into leases, have expired.