APLOI (PRIVATE) LIMITED vs FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN through Ministry of Interior, Pakistan Secretariat, Constitu

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APLOI (PRIVATE) LIMITED VS FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN through Ministry of Interior, Pakistan Secretariat, Constitutional Avenue, Islamabad R. 44--- Constitution of Pakistan, Art. 199---Constitutional petition---Maintainability---Procurement contract---Petitioner was aggrieved of cancellation of tender for the supply, installation, commissioning, support, maintenance and upgradation of servers and software for issuing dematerialized identity cards with cryptographic-hash-based dynamic QR authentication codes---Contention of petitioner was that it was not necessary to sign a contract and that the purchase order itself contained the contract---Contention of respondent was that software supply, installation and maintenance contracts went into minute details in relation to the performance of the solution as well as other matters such as on-going maintenance and troubleshooting in the software once installed; that a mere purchase order in itself rarely met the requirements of such contracts and that was why the purchase order was issued subject to a definitive binding contract being signed, which was yet to be signed and that it was a basic legal rule that an agreement to agree did not create a concluded and enforceable contract---Validity---Even if it was assumed for sake of arguments that a contract was concluded when the purchase order was issued, even then the remedy for its breach laid in a suit and not by way of a constitutional petition---Constitutional petition was dismissed. Citation Name: 2023 MLD 505 ISLAMABADBookmark this Case APLOI (PRIVATE) LIMITED VS FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN through Ministry of Interior, Pakistan Secretariat, Constitutional Avenue, Islamabad R. 44---Procurement contract---Cancellation of tender---Opportunity of hearing---Scope---Petitioner was aggrieved of cancellation of tender for the supply, installation, commissioning, support, maintenance and upgradation of servers and software for issuing dematerialized identity cards with cryptographic-hash-based dynamic QR authentication codes---Contention of petitioner was that an opportunity of hearing was not given before abandonment of the project by the respondent---Validity---No adverse order against the petitioner was passed for it to be heard first---Petitioner had an expectation of winning the contract, if the project was going ahead, but by no means it could be held that the petitioner by submitting the bid acquired the right that the project must be implemented by respondent using external suppliers---No bidder had an unqualified right for a project to be implemented---Present case was not a case of rejection of a bid, as dressed up by the petitioner, but one of abandonment of an externally sourced project---Constitutional petition was dismissed. Citation Name: 2023 MLD 505 ISLAMABADBookmark this Case APLOI (PRIVATE) LIMITED VS FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN through Ministry of Interior, Pakistan Secretariat, Constitutional Avenue, Islamabad Rr. 33, 38 & 44---Procurement contract---Rejection of bids---Purchase order conditional upon a formal definitive contract---Petitioner was aggrieved of cancellation of tender for the supply, installation, commissioning, support, maintenance and upgradation of servers and software for issuing dematerialized identity cards with cryptographic-hash-based dynamic QR authentication codes---Contention of petitioner was that rejection of the bids could occur only prior to the acceptance of bids (Rule 33); that the petitioner's bid was the most advantageous one (Rule 38) and that the procurement contract had 'come into force' on the date the notice of acceptance of bid vide purchase order was given (Rule 44)---Validity---Rule 33 could not be turned on its head to say that just because a bid could not be rejected after it was accepted, it became mandatory for a procuring agency to proceed with a procurement when it no longer desired to---What R. 33 meant to convey was that, amongst competing bids, if any bid was to be rejected, then that was to be done before any was accepted---Rule 38 was also premised on the ground that procurement was going ahead and clarified that the most advantageous bid was to accepted in that case; it did not mandate that the procurement itself became mandatory for the procurer---Effectiveness of a contract of procurement under R. 44 was subject to the condition "where no formal signing of a contract is required…"---Purchase order in the instant case was unequivocally conditional upon a formal definitive contract being signed---Constitutional petition was dismissed. Citation Name: 2023 MLD 505 ISLAMABADBookmark this Case APLOI (PRIVATE) LIMITED VS FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN through Ministry of Interior, Pakistan Secretariat, Constitutional Avenue, Islamabad R. 36--- Constitution of Pakistan, Art. 199---Constitutional petition---Maintainability---Procedures of open competitive bidding---Information provided in technical proposal used by procuring agency after cancellation of tender---Petitioner was aggrieved of cancellation of tender for the supply, installation, commissioning, support, maintenance and upgradation of servers and software for issuing dematerialized identity cards with cryptographic-hash-based dynamic QR authentication codes---Contention of petitioner was that his entire information was with the respondent and that the respondent had capitalized on that information to develop the solution in-house---Held, that even if the allegation of the petitioner was assumed to be true it still did not translate into any legal right to be enforced in the constitutional jurisdiction---If the respondent while developing the in-house solution had used any proprietary know-how of the petitioner that constituted intellectual property protected against unauthorized use by the intellectual property laws, then the petitioner had a remedy under such laws---Such contention was denied by the respondent by stating that no protected intellectual property not available in the public domain was received as a consequence of the petitioner's proposal---Constitutional petition was dismissed.

APLOI (PRIVATE) LIMITED vs FEDERATION OF PAKISTAN through Ministry of Interior, Pakistan Secretariat, Constitutional Avenue, Islamabad R — 2023 MLD 505 ISLAMABAD

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