In a major setback for the Tripura's health department, the High Court on Wednesday cancelled the tender of drug supply for the Mumbai based Reliance Life Science Private Limited which was awarded by the state government in July this year for supplying Life saving drugs (injection) for cancer patients in Tripura cancer hospital.
The Tripura government earlier after floating a tender for this has awarded it to the Reliance, based on the provided experience as sought by the government which perhaps has dissatisfied the HC today. "The HC was dissatisfied with the experience of the Reliance," said Advocate of Delhi HC Ashish Verma.
The HC under the division bench of Chief Justice A A Khureshi and Justice S Talapatra today cancelling the tender for Reliance has ordered the government to award the same to Bangaluru-based Pharmaceutical giant BIOCON limited which along with the Reliance submitted the tender with the Tripura government.
Senior Advocate of Tripura HC Kalyan Narayan Bhattacharjee told the media, "Despite the government has sought a criteria of minimum 3 years of manufacturing experience for the tender, the Reliance Life Science Private Limited has submitted its tender saying it has marketing experience of 3 years. The manufacturing experience was not written in the criteria submitted by the Reliance."
He said, "Despite it be the fact the Government has awarded the tender work of supplying drug in Tripura cancer hospital and today dissatisfied with the documents of Reliance the HC has cancelled their tender and asked the government to award the same to the BIOCON limited." In August this year the BIOCON company had filed a writ petition in the high court of Tripura (WP-1018/2019) challenging the validity of the supply order.
"The high court division bench then said that state government's negotiation of rates with BIOCON must be completed within a fortnight and till the end of this period Reliance Life Science can continue the supply" said senior advocate Kalyan Narayan Bhattacharjee, appointed counsel of BIOCON.
However, the high court order said that BIOCON Company should negotiate rates with the health department and supply the medicines at not higher than 10% of the rates at which Reliance Life Science was supplying cancer drugs.
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