Cuttack: Orissa High Court on Thursday indicated that it would decide on the validity of tender process finalised by the municipal corporation for implementing its solid waste management project-2016.

The court made the observation following analogous hearing of two petitions that have challenged the validity of the project.

The division bench of Chief Justice Vineet Saran and Justice B.R. Sarangi posted the matter to May 3 for analogous hearing, along with arguments of both the petitioners.

Initially, the tender process had come under judicial scrutiny for the second time after Jagruti Welfare Organisation (Bhubaneswar) challenged the Cuttack Municipal Corporation's decision to disqualify it in the technical bid stage.

On February 12, the court had issued an interim stay order on the outcome of the tender process. Though a councillor had earlier filed a PIL seeking quashing of the Rs 147.26-crore five year contract to collect and dispose of city garbage, it had not been taken up for hearing.

Congress councillor Giribala Behera of ward No. 4 had finalised the tender of Metro Waste Handling Private Limited (New Delhi), which had emerged as the lowest bidder.

The civic body has already submitted its reply to the petitions expecting to be allowed to complete the tender process by awarding the contract to the lowest bidder.

Mired in legal tangle, the civic body had not been able to complete the tender process in its first attempt to implement the project. Though technical bids of two private companies were cleared, it could not proceed further as the high court had issued a stay on finalisation of the tender in September 2016.

Later, the court quashed the provisions related to the tender's financial eligibility criteria for participating bidders and directed the municipal corporation to invite fresh tenders on July 18, 2017.

Subsequently, the corporation had invited fresh bids for the project in September 2017.

As things stand now, the Metro Waste Handling Private Limited had emerged as the lowest bidder to implement the project. The tender finalisation process had been sent for to the state government for approval. Implementation of the project is significant as the civic body had continued on a monthly contract basis since the five-year deal with Hyderabad's Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited for garbage collection and disposal expired in April 2016.

The corporation had run into fresh trouble with Ramky stopping garbage collection and disposal work from April 2. It has since made interim arrangement with BBG agency -the local organisation through which REEL was carrying out the contract - to carry out the job to collect and dispose of garbage.