A court cannot compel evaluation of an e-bid no longer available in the procurement system.

The petitioner challenged the rejection of his bids for two municipal infrastructure packages and the dismissal of his appeals.

An earlier order directed that, if no work order had issued, the petitioner’s financial bid be evaluated.

The respondents later stated that the bid had been rejected on 2 January 2026 and that the e-procurement system no longer made its documents available for evaluation.

The petitioner disputed this and asserted that the documents could be retrieved with authorisation, but produced no material demonstrating their present availability.

1. Whether the petitioner’s financial bid could be retrieved from the e-procurement system and evaluated pursuant to the earlier order.

2. Whether any effective relief could be granted where the bid documents were unavailable for evaluation and the petitioner had not established another ground for interfering with the tender process.

The Court applied no specific statutory provision, precedent, or substantive tender-law doctrine in resolving the matter.

Its reasoning was confined to the practical and evidentiary limits on granting relief under its writ jurisdiction: a direction to evaluate a bid presupposes that the bid documents are available, and the Court cannot direct an evaluation shown to be technically impossible or reconstruct or substitute a bid from documents separately produced by the bidder.

The earlier direction to evaluate the bid presupposed that the bid and its supporting documents remained accessible.

The respondents stated that the rejected bid was no longer accessible through the e-procurement system, and the petitioner did not provide appropriate material to establish otherwise.

In the absence of the bid documents, the Court considered evaluation impracticable; it also declined to reconstruct or substitute the bid using separately produced documents, which would have to comply with the tender conditions and prescribed procedure.

No other basis for interfering with the tender process was demonstrated.

It clarified that it expressed no opinion on the merits of the bid or tender process; dismissal rested solely on the stated non-availability of the bid for evaluation.

Pending interlocutory applications were also disposed of.