The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favour of the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) in a dispute over the tender process for exporting 35,000 tonnes of 25 per cent broken non-basmati white rice to Cote D’Ivoire.
The court dismissed an appeal filed by the Rice Exporters Association of India, which had sought a fresh tender process with utmost transparency.
The Delhi High Court had previously rejected the association’s plea, upholding NAFED’s tender as “neither arbitrary nor violative of fundamental rights”, as per reports.
The rice exporters’ body had sought a new tender process, with or without the appointment of a facilitating agency, to provide equal opportunity to all exporters.
The association alleged collusion in the appointment of the Indian Rice Exporters Federation (IREF) as the facilitating agency, claiming it lacked rationale and was “manifestly arbitrary .”
However, NAFED argued that the conflict of interest claims were baseless and aimed at delaying the tender process.
The eligibility criteria in the tender documents required bidders to be either registered as empanelled exporters with NAFED or members of IREF.
The Rice Exporters Association claimed that these criteria were “tailor-made” to serve the business interests of a specific class of manufacturers and exporters, excluding its members and other rice exporters with valid licenses and experience.
Despite the association’s arguments that the tender conditions were arbitrary and violated Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, the Supreme Court upheld the Delhi High Court’s decision, allowing NAFED’s tender process for the export of non-basmati white rice to Cote D’Ivoire to proceed.