Judicial non-interference in tenders upheld absent mala fides or arbitrariness; non-disclosure of challenged blacklisting justifies disqualification if no timely rollback proof provided.

ORDER :

This Special Leave Petition arises from the judgment and order dated 11.12.2025 passed by the High Court of Himachal Pradesh in CWP No. 19682/2025, by which the writ petition filed by the petitioner herein seeking to challenge the action on the part of the respondent no.1- M/s. Indian Institute Of Technology, Mandi (for short ‘IIT, Mandi’) in declining to look into the financial bid of the petitioner came to be rejected.

2. The short facts relevant for the disposal of this writ petition are as under:-

3. The respondent no.1-IIT, Mandi floated a tender being RFP No.IIT Mandi (CW)/SE-1770/2025-26/1241-43 dated 30.07.2025 for “Project Management Consultancy(PMC) services for planning, design and development for construction of Academic Blocks, 2BHK and 3BHK Housing, and Student Activity Centre (including Sports Complex) and other related works in Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh.

4. In pursuance of said RFP referred to above, the petitioner submitted its bid, which was in two parts: (1) the technical bid and (2) the financial bid. In the same manner one NBCC (India) Ltd.(for short ‘NBCC’), also offered its bid in two parts i.e. the technical bid and the financial bid. It appears from the materials on record that when time came to open the financial bid, it came to be notice of the respondent no.1 that at some point of time, the petitioner herein was blacklisted by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (for short ‘BMC’) vide order dated 05.09.2024. In accordance with the tender document, the bidders were obliged to make some declarations. One of the columns provided in the tender document relates to the question “whether the bidder PSU has ever been blacklisted by any organization at any time”. As against this question the petitioner answered ‘No’. Since the respondent no.1 came to know about the order of blacklisting, it decided not to open the financial bid offered by the petitioner and thereby disqualified the petitioner from the entire bidding process.

5. In such circumstances, referred to above, the petitioner thought fit to challenge such action referred to above on the part of the respondent no.1 by filing a writ petition before the High Court. The High Court looked into the matter and ultimately thought fit not to interfere and accordingly, rejected the writ petition. While rejecting the writ petition, the High Court observed thus:

“10. The petitioner himself, by choice as such, has not given the details of the blacklisting and the respondent having been informed of the same by some source had also issued show cause notice dated 21.11.2025 (Annexure P-2) asking the petitioner to give reply to the same on or before 24.11.2025 (17.00 hours), while mentioning the letter dated 05.09.2024. Though the reply was given on the same date i.e. 21.11.2025 (Annexure P-3) by the petitioner and justification had been tried to be given that the aforesaid letter was in violation of the Agreement entered into between the BMC & the petitioner- Company and that Senior Civil Judge (Commercial Court), Bhubaneswar as such had also come to the conclusion that there was no blacklisting order passed against the petitioner. The relevant part of the reply to the said show cause reads as under:-

"With reference to the show cause notice received vide aforementioned letter dated 21.11.2025, we wish to submit the following factual and categorical responses for your kind consideration.

 It is stated that B AND R was Justified in s