Tender eligibility cannot rest on a Chartered Accountant’s certificate when audited statements are mandatory.

The Puducherry Transport Department invited tenders to select an agency to provide vehicles for government use.

Corrigenda reduced the turnover qualification, lowered the minimum fleet requirement, and relaxed the requirement concerning the age of vehicles bidders had to possess.

The fourth respondent was declared the successful bidder.

Three competing firms challenged the tender process, alleging, among other things, that procurement should have been through GeM, the corrigenda were improperly publicised and tailored to favour the successful bidder, and the fourth respondent had not established the required turnover through the documents prescribed by the tender.

1. Whether the Government of Puducherry was required to procure the vehicle-hire services through GeM rather than its own e-tender portal.

2. Whether publication of the corrigenda only on the Puducherry e-tender portal violated the General Financial Rules (GFR).

3. Whether the successive changes to the tender qualifications were mala fide or tailored to favour the fourth respondent.

4. Whether the fourth respondent’s selection as the successful bidder could stand when the tender committee had not verified all documents required to establish turnover eligibility.

Rule 149 of the General Financial Rules, 2017, concerns procurement through GeM of goods and services available there; the Court did not decide its application to these vehicle-hire services, holding instead that the petitioners, having participated in the e-tender, could not challenge the portal merely because they were unsuccessful.

Rule 173 requires modifications to bidding documents to be publicised in the same manner as the initial document.

Under the tender terms, absent a requirement that qualifications be held on the notification date, bidders had to satisfy them by the time of bid submission; however, the prescribed supporting documents remained mandatory.

The tender required both a Chartered Accountant’s certificate and audited financial statements, including the specified financial statements and reports.

The scrutiny committee could not waive or overlook those requirements.

The Court found no basis to invalidate the use of the Puducherry portal or the portal-only publication of the corrigenda: the petitioners had participated in that process, and the RFP had specified where corrigenda would be posted.

The tender file recorded requests to reduce the fleet requirement, and the turnover threshold was proportionately reduced when the fleet requirement fell from 15 vehicles to 10; the Court therefore found no sufficient basis to infer that the amendments were made solely to favour the fourth respondent.

The vehicle-age relaxation concerned the vehicles bidders had to possess, not the requirement that vehicles supplied during the contract be no more than five years old.

On turnover, the fourth respondent could rely on an updated tax return if the required qualification was established by bid submission, but the return and the Chartered Accountant’s certificate did not displace the RFP’s separate requirement for audited financial statements and other specified documents.

Because the committee had relied on the certificate without verifying those documents, its scrutiny was deficient.

The Court declared illegal the action declaring the fourth respondent the successful bidder and remitted the matter to the competent authority for fresh technical-bid and qualification verification.

If the bidders, including the fourth respondent, had submitted all documents required by the RFP, the authority was to reconsider the price bids and declare the result afresh.

The authority could also take other appropriate decisions in accordance with law; the exercise was to be completed expeditiously, with no order as to costs.