Joint venture partners may be required to meet minimum work-execution criteria in the same financial year.

The petitioner participated in a PWD tender as a joint venture (JV), with M/s Dinesh Chandra Patni as lead partner holding a 65% share and M/s Patni Engineering and Construction Limited holding 35%. The tender was for hill-side cutting, muck disposal, wall and cross-drainage works on the Kathgodam–Ranibagh section of National Highway No. 87.

The Tender Evaluation Committee declared the JV’s bid non-responsive because, although each partner had executed the prescribed minimum quantity of principal work, they had done so in different financial years.

The petitioner challenged the Committee’s decision dated 23 May 2026, arguing that the tender conditions did not require both partners to meet the criterion in the same year.

1. Whether the tender conditions required each JV partner to execute the minimum quantity of principal work specified in Clause 2.2 A(d) in the same financial year.

2. Whether the employer’s interpretation and the rejection of the JV’s bid warranted interference under Article 226 of the Constitution.

Under Clause 1.1(e)(i) of the Standard Bidding Document (SBD), each JV partner must independently fulfil at least 25% of the eligibility criteria for all requirements; Clause 2.2 A(d) requires the bidder to have executed the specified minimum quantities of principal work in any one of the five financial years preceding the bid.

In tender matters, judicial review under Article 226 is limited: courts ordinarily defer to the employer’s interpretation of its tender documents and intervene only where the decision-making process is mala fide, arbitrary, irrational or perverse (Central Coalfields Ltd. v. SLL-SML (Joint Venture Consortium); Afcons Infrastructure Ltd. v. Nagpur Metro Rail Corporation Ltd.).

Courts should also weigh public interest and avoid disrupting infrastructure projects absent sufficient grounds for intervention (Raunaq International Ltd. v. I.V.R. Construction Ltd.; Air India Ltd. v. Cochin International Airport Ltd.; M/s N.G. Projects Ltd. v. Vinod Kumar Jain).

The Court read Clause 1.1(e)(i), requiring each JV partner to meet the eligibility requirements separately, together with Clause 2.2 A(d), which required execution of the minimum quantity in any one financial year. It therefore considered the employer’s view—that each partner had to satisfy the principal-work criterion in the same financial year—to be a permissible application of the SBD, notwithstanding that the partners had each met the quantity requirement in different years.

Applying the deferential standard governing tender review, the Court found no basis to regard that interpretation as sufficiently arbitrary to justify interference.

It also noted the asserted urgency and public importance of the road project.

The writ petition was dismissed, and any interim order was vacated.