The court ruled that tender eligibility criteria must explicitly state disqualifications, allowing joint venture experience to be considered for bidder qualifications, ensuring clarity and fairness in tender processes.

JUDGMENT :

UJJAL BHUYAN, J.

1. Leave granted.

2. This appeal by special leave is directed against the judgment and order dated 04.04.2025 passed by a Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur (briefly ‘the High Court’ hereinafter) in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1745 of 2025 (M/s. Surguja Bricks Industries Company vs. State of Chhattisgarh).

2.1. Be it stated that respondent No. 3 had issued a notice inviting tender dated 08.01.2025 for construction of a road pursuant to which the appellant had submitted its tender. After exchanging correspondences, respondent No. 3 vide letter dated 19.03.2025 disqualified the appellant at the stage of technical evaluation on the ground that one experience certificate of the appellant was of lesser value than 50 percent of the contract value while the other experience certificate was that of joint venture of which appellant was a partner; thus appellant failed to meet the eligibility criterion. Appellant challenged rejection of its tender on the aforesaid ground before the High Court by filing a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution of India. By the impugned judgment and order dated 04.04.2025, High Court did not find any merit in the writ petition and accordingly dismissed the same.

3. Aggrieved thereby, appellant preferred the related special leave petition before this Court. On 08.04.2025, this Court recorded the contention of the appellant as under:

The learned senior counsel for the petitioner invited our attention to the qualification criteria in the Notice Inviting Tender document, which uses the expression “each prime contractor in the same name and style, in its name must have in the last five years....” It has been, inter alia, argued that the use of the phrase “each prime contractor” would mean that if the past experience is in the form of a Joint Venture, each participant of that Joint Venture, if a bidder under this tender notice, would be eligible if he qualifies the financial criteria. It has been submitted that if the qualification criteria is interpreted in the manner as suggested above, the petitioner meets the financial and experience criteria and, therefore, would be technically eligible.

3.1. This Court after observing that the matter requires consideration, issued notice and passed an interim order to the effect that if the financial bids had not been opened, the same shall not be opened till the next date.

4. Relevant facts may be briefly noted.

5. On 08.01.2025, the Chief Engineer (Central Tender Cell), Office of the Engineer-in-Chief, Public Works Department, Naya Raipur (‘respondent No. 3’ hereinafter) issued a tender notice being first call NIT No. 246/TC/24-25 for the work: construction of road from gram Ramgarh to gram Kotadal length 27.20 kilometers, District Korea, Chhattisgarh work code W25598, the probable amount of contract being Rs. 4521.56 lakhs, to be completed within a period of 12 months (referred to hereinafter as the NIT). As per the eligibility criteria (1) of the pre-qualification document, it is stated that to qualify for award of the contract, each prime contractor in the same name and style (tenderer) in its name must have in the last five years (a) achieved in any one financial year a financial turnover (in all classes of civil engineering construction works) of construction work of atleast 60 percent of the probable amount of contract for which the bid has been invited and (b) (i) satisfactorily completed atleast one similar work equal in value to the extent of 50 percent of the probable amount of contract as on the date of submissio