In Brief
The Supreme Court upheld the Forest Department's forfeiture of a contractor's security deposit from a 1998 forest timber auction. The High Court had wrongly applied an outdated 1980-81 Conditions of Sale Manual based on unsigned handwritten corrections. The Court held that the 1987-88 Manual—the latest published edition—governed the auction. Under that Manual, silence on approval beyond a stipulated period meant deemed approval, placing the burden on the contractor to inquire. The contractor's repeated failure to complete work despite multiple notices, and their resort to litigation only after forfeiture, showed lack of diligence. The forfeiture was thus valid and legally enforceable.
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