Judicial review of technical tender evaluations is limited absent proven arbitrariness, mala fides, or procedural illegality.

The petitioner, a Joint Venture (JV), participated in a tender (e-NIT No. 22 of 2025-26) issued by the Urban Environmental Engineering Department, Srinagar, for the pollution abatement of River Jhelum, valued at ₹61.56 crores.

The petitioner challenged the respondent’s decision dated 20.11.2025, which declared its technical bid non-responsive.

The petitioner alleged that the official respondents issued a corrigendum on the last date of submission to reduce the experience requirement from ten years to seven years specifically to oust the petitioner and favor respondent No. 5.

The respondents contended that the seven-year criteria was the standard rule and the correction was a rectification of a prior oversight.

The respondents asserted that one of the JV partners, M/s R.K. Gupta & Co., failed to meet the mandatory experience threshold of 25% of the project cost and had submitted misleading experience certificates that merged two distinct works into one.

1. Whether the change in eligibility criteria via corrigendum was arbitrary, mala fide, or intended to favor a specific bidder.

2. Whether the Court can interfere in the technical evaluation of a bidder’s experience and capability in a commercial tender.

The Court applied the principles of judicial restraint in administrative actions as established in Tata Cellular v. Union of India, which restricts judicial review to the decision-making process rather than the merits of the decision itself.

It relied on Jagdish Mandal v. State of Orissa and Silppi Constructions Contractors v. Union of India, emphasizing that courts should not use a "magnifying glass" to find faults in technical tenders and must grant "fair play in the joints" to the government.

The court invoked N.G. Projects Limited vs. Vinod Kumar Jain, which holds that even in cases of suspected arbitrariness, courts should refrain from injuncting infrastructure projects and instead relegate parties to seeking damages to avoid public loss.

The Court found the petitioner’s allegation of mala fide timing regarding the corrigendum to be factually incorrect; while the petitioner claimed the criteria changed after they bid, the record showed the bid was submitted on 30.10.2025, three days after the corrigendum was issued on 27.10.2025.

Regarding the technical disqualification, the Court noted that the evaluation of experience is a technical matter best left to experts.

The respondents provided detailed justifications for the disqualification, including the fact that the petitioner’s JV partner failed to meet the 25% project cost experience threshold even after applying escalation costs and that their experience certificates were found to be factually disputed or misrepresented.

Applying the settled law, the Court determined it lacked the expertise to sit as an appellate authority over these technical findings.

The writ petition was dismissed as being without merit, affirming that the Court must exercise restraint in commercial transactions involving technical complexities.