Competition Commission of India (CCI): This reference was filed before Ashok Kumar, Chairperson and Augustine Peter and U.C. Nahta, Members by the Chief Materials Manager/Sales, Eastern Railway i.e. informant under Section 19(1)(b) of the Competition Act, 2002 against Laxven Systems and Medha Servo Drives (P) Ltd., alleging contravention of provisions of Section 3 of the Competition Act.
Facts of the case were that informant floated a tender for procurement of Microprocessor Control and Fault Diagnostics System for Electric Locos as per Research Designs and Standard Organisation. As per the information brought before Commission, there were initially 4 approved vendors but an amendment was brought in the criteria for selection due to which 2 vendors were delisted. Laxven did not participate in the impugned tender due to which by default, Medha won the tender who quoted a high rate. Negotiation by informant were not accepted and they were forced to accept the high rate quoted by Medha thus, Laxven was alleged for non-participation as a result of bid suppression and formation of a cartel.
Commission observed the fact that Laxven had not participated in other tenders conducted in the 3 Railway Zones and the reason being that they had not developed a Prototype for the required System. Thus, the allegation of bid suppression and cartelization was unsubstantiated. The high rate quoted by Medha was found to be justified due to the improved system which was to be supplied to the informant. Commission on finding no contravention of Section 3 of the Act directed the information to be closed in terms of Section 26(2) of the Act. [Chief Material Manager v. Laxven Systems, 2019 SCC OnLine CCI 1, dated 02-01-2019]
