### Experience of Subsidiary Cannot Be Imputed to Parent Company for Meeting Mandatory Eligibility Criteria

The Petitioner challenged a communication dated February 4, 2026, issued by the Embassy of India, Kuwait, which disqualified the Petitioner from a tender (RFP No. Kuw/Cons/415/03/2025) for outsourcing consular, passport, and visa services

The disqualification was based on the Petitioner’s failure to satisfy Mandatory Eligibility Criteria regarding prior experience.

The Petitioner argued that the experience of its subsidiaries should be counted in its favor, as the RFP prevents bidding companies and their subsidiaries from bidding separately, thereby treating them as a single competitive unit.

This was the third such disqualification against the Petitioner involving identical RFP terms for different Indian Missions (London and Abu Dhabi).

Whether the experience of a subsidiary company can be legally treated as the experience of the parent bidding company to satisfy mandatory eligibility criteria in a government tender.

Whether the court should grant an interim stay on the tender process pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, given that similar matters are currently under protective orders by the Apex Court.

The Court primarily applied the principle that a bidding company must satisfy eligibility requirements on its own "sound financial credentials" and experience without third-party involvement unless expressly permitted by the RFP.

It relied on the precedent of *Rohde and Schwarz GMBH and CO. Kg v. Airport Authority of India*, which established that a bidder cannot claim the experience of a separate legal entity (subsidiary) as its own simply by holding a majority stake, as they remain distinct corporate identities.

The Court also upheld the doctrine of *stare decisis* regarding its own recent decisions on identical facts between the same parties.

The Court found that Chapter V, Para 1(i) of the RFP explicitly requires the "Bidding Company" to possess the requisite experience of 3 to 10 years depending on the service category.

It rejected the Petitioner’s interpretation of Chapter VI, Clause 1(d)—which prohibits subsidiaries from bidding separately—as a clause that allows for the pooling of experience.

Applying *Rohde and Schwarz*, the Court reasoned that unless a merger or amalgamation has occurred, the resources and "pedigree" of a subsidiary do not automatically translate to the parent.

Since the Petitioner failed to show any RFP provision allowing subsidiary experience to be read as the bidder's experience, and because the Court had already dismissed two previous petitions by the same Petitioner on identical grounds (W.P.(C) 2760/2026 and W.P.(C) 1533/2026), the Court saw no reason to depart from its prior findings.

On the second issue, the Court declined to grant the Petitioner a one-week stay to approach the Supreme Court, despite being informed of interim protective orders in related SLPs.

The writ petition and all pending applications were dismissed.