The Delhi High Court has held that disclosure of mere marks without recorded reasons, use of undisclosed comparative standards, and inconsistent scoring across identical proposals violated transparency, fairness and Article 14 standards in public procurement. Accordingly, the Court allowed the petitions filed by E Trav Tech Limited and Verasys Limited challenging their technical disqualification in CPV service tenders for Indian Missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra, where they had failed to secure the 70% technical qualifying threshold.
The Court clarified that in public procurement, even where technical evaluation is undertaken by expert bodies, the process must still satisfy constitutional standards of fairness, transparency, reasonableness and equality. Courts will not re-evaluate technical merits, but they can and will interfere where the decision-making process is vitiated by undisclosed benchmarks, unexplained deductions, inconsistent marking, and absence of recorded reasons.
The Division Bench comprising Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Shail Jain made it clear that the case was not about asking the Court to re-mark the technical bids or sit in appeal over expert committees. The real issue, according to the Court, was whether the decision-making process was fair, transparent, reasonable and non-arbitrary, as required under Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution.
The Court found serious defects in the evaluation process. It observed that for comparative criteria, such as “best offer” parameters, the authorities did not disclose what benchmark was treated as the best offer or how proportionately lower marks were worked out. Without disclosing the objective standard of comparison, the bidders could not understand why their proposals were treated as inferior.
The Court also found unexplained inconsistency in marking. It specifically noted that under Criterion 9 relating to reputation and client references, E Trav and Verasys had submitted substantially identical documentary material across different Missions, yet received sharply different marks, including zero in some places and higher scores in others. In the Court’s view, such variation without disclosed reasons made the evaluation incapable of objective verification and left it resting purely on subjective discretion.
On objective criteria too, the Court found the deductions unsustainable. It noted instances under parking, area, number of counters, operational efficiency, appointment slots and turnaround time where the petitioners appeared to have met or exceeded the stated benchmark, but still received reduced or even zero marks. The Court treated this as a major indicator of arbitrariness because no deficiencies were identified and no explanation was recorded.
The Court rejected the respondents’ argument that oral presentations before the evaluation committees explained the deductions. It held that even if presentations formed part of the process, they could not substitute recorded reasons. If a bidder’s shortcomings were noticed during presentation, those shortcomings had to appear in contemporaneous evaluation records; otherwise, the process remained opaque and beyond meaningful scrutiny.
The Court further observed that the lack of transparency had a public interest dimension as well. E Trav had placed on record that its financial bids were substantially lower than those of the successful bidders in all the concerned Missions, and that position was not disputed. The Court said that exclusion of a lower bidder through an arbitrary technical process can directly affect the public exchequer, making the issue larger than a private commercial grievance.
Briefly, a batch of seven petitions were filed by E Trav Tech Limited and Verasys Limited challenging their disqualification at the technical bid stage in tenders issued for outsourcing Consular/Passport/Visa (CPV) services at Indian Missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra. The petitioners had been told that they failed to secure the minimum qualifying score of 70% in the technical evaluation, and therefore their financial bids were not opened.
The core grievance of the petitioners was that the authorities disclosed only parameter-wise marks but did not disclose the basis or reasons for awarding those marks. According to them, the deductions under several criteria were arbitrary, unsupported by reasons, and in many cases inconsistent even where materially identical proposals and documents had been submitted across different Missions.
However, this was not the first round of litigation. Earlier, the petitioners had approached the High Court, and later the Supreme Court, seeking disclosure of the breakup of marks. After the Supreme Court directed the respondents to furnish the parameter-wise breakup, the authorities disclosed the marks in May 2026. The present batch of petitions was then filed on the basis of that later disclosure, arguing that even after disclosure, no reasons had been given for the deductions.
