Chandigarh, May 29 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court (HC) has stayed the May 23 order of the municipal commissioner terminating the contract of Lions Company, which is responsible for cleaning the city's southern sectors - Sectors 31 to 56, 61 and 63. A division bench, comprising justice Deepak Sibal and justice Lapita Banerji, passed the order while hearing the firm's plea for quashing the commissioner's decision. Lions Company has been carrying out mechanised and manual sweeping in the city since 2016, when it first got the tender. The firm stated that the MC had floated a tender on December 31, 2025, inviting bids for geographic information system (GIS)-based sweeping in the southern sectors. According to the plea, the company was declared the lowest bidder through an agenda placed before the MC House on April 7. The matter was subsequently referred by the commissioner to the House for consideration on whether the tender should be cancelled, geographically split, or undertaken by the MC itself. On April 8, the House unanimously resolved to reject all three proposals and award the tender to Lions Company. The plea further stated that over a month has passed but the resolution has not been implemented. "The commissioner, who is merely the chief executive officer of the corporation, has asked the firm to hand over the work to the MC, which is in clear defiance of the House decision," the firm stated through its lawyers senior advocate Gaurav Chopra and Rishabh Bajaj, and argued that the commissioner has no jurisdiction to not comply with the House decision. The MC has maintained that though Lion's Company had given the lowest bid of Rs.5.9 crore per month, it was 35% more than the civic body's estimated monthly expenditure of Rs.4.3 crore. The court has ordered the MC to submit a formal response by July 8....