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Judgment
Kalyan Rai Surana, J. - Heard Mr. M.K. Choudhury, learned Senior Advocate assisted by Sri M.P. Goswami, learned counsel as well as Sri B.N. Sarma, learned Senior Govt. Advocate, State of Assam. The petitioner herein is the writ petitioner in W.P.(C) No. 3274/2014. Aggrieved by the judgment and order dated 22.05.2015 the petitioners had filed a writ appeal, being W.A. No. 144/2015. This review is directed against order dated 17.06.2015 passed by this Court in the said writ appeal.
By filing the writ petition, the petitioner has challenged the validity of the tender floated in respect of 60% Category of Government Registered Fishery, namely, 30/128 Mora Gaurang Fishery under Bilasipara Sub-Division, Dhubri for a period of seven years w.e.f. 01.06.2014, fixing 12.06.2014 as the last date of submission of the tender. It was alleged that the tender was in violation of Rule 43 of the Assam Fishery Rules, 1953. The said writ petition was dismissed, inter-alia, by holding that the contention of the petitioner that the Notice Inviting Tender (NIT) dated 30.05.2015 was bad in law being contrary to the provisions under Rule 43 of the Rules of 1953, is without force and substance.
The finding of this Court in the writ appeal, inter-alia, was that on facts the appellant was not entitled to the relief on technical ground because the materials on record disclose that the appellant had knowledge of the tender notice, the appellant had obtained copy of the tender notice under the RTI on the very next day of issuance of tender notice, but did not submit the tender although they had almost 12 days'' time to participate in the tender process.
In this review application with a view to counter the finding recorded by file writ appellate court, it is contended that the certain information were sought by the petitioner through RTI application dated 25.05.2014, pursuant to which the S.D.O. Bilasipara had issued information by letter dated 30.05.2014 and contended that the said RTI was on completely different context and the same had nothing to do with the NIT dated 30.05.2014 in question and it was argued that the respondent No. 4 had tried to mislead the Hon''ble Court. The learned Senior Counsel for the review petitioner contended that the finding of this Court that the writ appellant had knowledge about issuance of NIT in question was an error apparent on the face of record and contended that if a correct and complete fact was brought to the notice of the court, the court would not have dismissed the writ appeal and, as such, prayed for review of the judgment and order dated 16.07.2015 passed by this Court in W.A. No. 144/2015.
We have observed that the RTI application dated 28.05.2014 (Annexure-II) does not bear any signature or the office seal of the authority receiving the RTI application and it also does not disclose the name of the concerned office under Bilasipara Sub-Division where the RTI application was purportedly submitted to the State Public Information Officer and the said document also does not disclose the manner in which the requisite RTI application fees was submitted. Admittedly, in the present case the review petitioner did not produce its purported RTI application dated 28.05.2014 before the writ appellate court and having failed to avail the opportunity, the petitioner cannot be permitted to present that document in the subsequent stage because it is not the case of the petitioner that the said document was not available with them, at the relevant point of time or that despite due diligence they could not produce the said document at the time of hearing.
The learned Senior counsel strenuously argued that the court has inherent power to review. In our opinion, it is not disputed that the Court has inherent power to review. However, the condition precedent before invoking the review provision is that it must be shown that because of the judgment, there is either miscarriage of justice or there is grave and apparent error starring on the face of the record. In this case, the categorical finding of this court in the order dated 17.06.2015 was that the petitioner-appellant had knowledge of the impugned tender notice and that a copy of the tender notice in question was obtained under RTI on the very next day of issuance of the tender notice and thus, had almost 12 days'' time to participate in the tender process. However, the correctness of the said findings remains undisputed because in the review petition, there is no pleading on oath to counter the same. Therefore, in the case in hand, the absence of the conditions precedent required for entertaining review application being absent, this Court is not inclined to entertain the review application. Moreover, it is a well settled law that the review court cannot act as an appellate court and a mere possibility of two views is not the ground for a review. It appears that in order to find out the error apparent, this Court would have to delve into the entire records and re-appreciate the entire facts afresh, which cannot be done as review jurisdiction, inter-alia, is limited only to the error apparent on the face of record and such error must be apparent on a mere looking of record, without requiring any long drawn process of reasoning.
In view of the discussion above, the review of the order dated 17.06.2015 is not maintainable and hence, it is dismissed.