The Privatization Commission wishes to carry out the divestment by way of privatization of Government

of Pakistans 100% shareholding in Heavy Electrical Complex (Private) Limited, and has engaged you as
legal counsel for preparing the entire documentation involved in inviting offers and awarding the
contract by which this shareholding is to be transferred and sold. On the basis of your understanding of
the Contract Act, 1872, kindly write an advisory note to the Privatization Commission, outlining how
your client can proceed with the transaction in a manner that would best protect its interests.


Acceptance of proposal

Expression of interest received from bidders is termed as a proposal because
[1]
when one person
signifies to another his willingness to do or abstain from doing anything, with a view to obtaining the
assent of that other to such an act or abstinence, he is said to make a proposal.


During the course of the bidding, an acceptance with a variation is no acceptance; it is simply a counter
proposal which must be accepted by the original promisor, in this case the buying party, before a
contract is made

Thereafter, when Shell Holdings signifies its assent to the proposal, the proposal is said to be accepted
and it becomes a promise. This will happen once a single potential buyer is zeroed in after his proposal is
properly scrutinized by Shell Holdings. And when a potential buyer acts in consideration or abstains in
consideration of a promise it is termed as consideration for the promise and thus every promise and
every set of promises, forming consideration for each other, is an agreement.

The communication of an acceptance is complete when put in a course of transmission from the buyer
to the seller and when it comes to the knowledge of the person to whom it is made. For the
communication of the acceptance, the assent can be signified by either an explicit approach of a written
signature on the contract by the buying party to Shell Holdings or an implicit approach via email,
telephone as mentioned in the terms and conditions of the contract set out by the holding company.