The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed Indian Hotels Company Ltd’s plea challenging the tender procedure of the proposed auction of the Taj Mahal Hotel by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). Tata Group-owned IHCL had moved the division bench of the Delhi High Court against the revised tender document released by the civic body. It had argued that the tender document fails to take into account its ‘blemish-free’ record as observed by the Supreme Court. While ruling in April last year that it could go ahead with the auction of the hotel, the top court had said that NDMC should take into account the “blemish-free” record of the Taj while deciding the party to whom the operating licence will be given. However, a high court bench comprising Justice S Ravindra Bhat and Justice AK Chawla upheld the tendering process. “There are two basic things the bench has observed. The court has upheld the tender document of NDMC. The tender document prepared by NDMC is exhaustive and adequately deals with the nuances of the subject matter. Secondly, they have concluded that they would not like to interfere in policy matters, taking a cue from several Supreme Court judgements which had stated that the tender conditions are policy matters, and that the court should rarely interfere in such matters. It is not a case of any judicial interference,” said NDMC’s counsel, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain. NDMC had argued that it had not prejudiced the Tatas in any way and that it had kept the threshold so high that only serious players can contest in the auction, so the petitioners had a fair chance. IHCL declined to comment on the judgement. An official from NDMC said the auction will go ahead as planned. NDMC has set June 19 as the date of the e-auction in the revised tender, which allows cross holding in hotel chains of up to 20%, compared with 5% earlier, which could ease out the process for chains like IHCL rival ITC, which has a cross holding of 14.98% in its rival EIH (the Oberoi Group). Other conditions, like the net worth criteria (the bidder should have an average turnover of Rs 400 crore and above in the past three financial years from hotel or resort operations), the lease period of 33 years, and the minimum revenue share arrangement of 17.25%, stay the same in the reworked tender. The property was given to IHCL on a lease of 33 years. IHCL has been running the hotel on a series of temporary extensions since the lease ran out in 2011.