Mumbai: The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to a request from Mumbai Metropolitan Region Deelopment Authority (MMRDA) counsel to defer the hearing in a special leave petition filed by infra-construction major Larsen & Toubro to Friday. The MMRDA counsel said they were in communication with the authority’s top brass about the bids for Thane’s twin-tunnel and elevated road project. The CJI Bhushan Gavai with Justice A G Masih on Thursday again expressed surprise and reiterated that L&T was selected by the Centre to construct the Central Vista project. The CJI also orally remarked that the public money is being spent to fund these projects and highlighted the need to ensure high safety standards by referring to the 2023 collapse of an under-construction tunnel in Uttarakhand where 41 persons were trapped for over two weeks. But MMRDA senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the public body executing the project has “substantial grounds” to hold L&T’s technical bids to be non-responsive, resulting in it not reaching the final price bids’ round.L&T had petitioned the SC against a Bombay high court vacation bench order which had dismissed its plea seeking stay on the opening of financial bids since it said MMRDA flouted PWD and CVC guidelines in not intimating it the results of the preceding technical round. —Swati Deshpande