The Delhi High Court has canceled the tender awarded by the Central government to private companies to outsource consular, passport and visa (CPV) services at Indian missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra and directed it to issue a fresh Request for Proposal (RFP) within one month to invite fresh bids.
A bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Shail Jain in its ruling on Wednesday held that the Center, while taking the decision, relied on undisclosed benchmarks, made unjustified deductions under objective evaluation criteria, and approved inconsistent marks.
The court said that these shortcomings strike at the core of transparency, fairness and equality in the public procurement process.
“The use of undisclosed benchmarks, unjustified discounts under objective criteria, inconsistent marks and complete absence of reasons on record strikes at the heart of transparency, fairness and equality in public procurement. Therefore, exclusion of a lower bidder on the basis of an arbitrary evaluation process, is not just an individual grievance but also raises public interest concerns under Article 14 of the Constitution,” the court said in its ruling.
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He added, “The impugned technical evaluations are set aside. Hence, the award of tenders in favor of the private defendants will also be set aside. The defendants Nos. 1 and 2 are directed to issue a fresh RFP for procurement of CPV services across all the four missions, namely Abu Dhabi (UAE), Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra (Australia), within a period of one month from the date of this judgment and make sincere efforts to conclude the process as soon as possible.”
The judgment was delivered on the basis of petitions filed by two unsuccessful bidders – E Trav Tech Limited represented by senior advocates Sanjay Jain and Sakshin Puri, briefed by Advocate Nakul Sachdeva, of Luthra and Luthra Law Offices and Verasys Limited. The companies participated in the tender process but were excluded at the technical evaluation stage, because they failed to obtain the minimum marks of 70% to qualify for the opening of their financial bids. Then they objected to the reports and declared them unsuccessful.
It was the case of E Trav and Verasys Limited that the criteria for case-wise evaluation of their technical tenders were arbitrary and the marks awarded to them as per the criteria in question were not supported by any reason whatsoever.
The Centre’s counsel, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma, opposed the petition, saying the same was a “late attempt” to reopen the defunct tender process.
However, the court in its 44-page ruling allowed the incumbent to continue providing services to ensure that there was no interruption in the provision of public services or inconvenience to the public.
