Non-compliance with mandatory tender conditions, specifically the failure to submit required documents like the Service Level Agreement (SLA), justifies the technical disqualification of a bidder.

ORDER :

Per: Hon'ble Shri Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, Chief Justice

1 . Petitioner has filed the subject petition seeking to impugn the disqualification of petitioner during technical evaluation. Petitioner gave a representation against his disqualification on 16.02.2026, which has been disposed of by the impugned order dated 02.03.2026 specifying that petitioner had not submitted HTC/SLA and the amount mentioned in experience certificate did not match with the CA certificate.

2 . Learned counsel for petitioner submits that furnishing of SLA (Service Level Agreement) was not mandatory, as such non-furnishing of same could not lead to disqualification of the bid of petitioner and secondly he submits that there is a mismatch in the amount mentioned in the experience certificate and the CA certificate because of the reason that petitioner had mentioned value of only one tender in the experience certificate, which satisfied the financial requirements and the CA certificate took into account the entire annual turn over of the petitioner, which was far in excess of the amount, mentioned in the experience certificate or required by the subject tender.

3. Per contra, learned Deputy Solicitor General appearing for Union of India submits that furnishing of HTC/SLA was a mandatory condition and since petitioner has admittedly not complied with the same on that count alone, the bid was liable to be declared as non-compliant.

4. Reference may be had to Clause VII of the heading "Important Points" of tender documents, which reads as under :-

"IMPORTANT POINTS

VII) Tenderer must fill complete details, sign & seal on each page in Appendix I, II, VI, Tender Submission Undertaking, NIT & Tender Document(MTF), SLA, and documents mentioned in Appendix-II and upload the same in GeM portal. In case of incomplete information in any of the field of the Appendices, bid may be treated as ineligible & tenderer may be technically disqualified."

5. Perusal of Clause VII clearly shows that it is stipulated in the tender that tenderer must fill complete details, sign, seal on each page of Appendix I to VI, tender submission undertaking, NIT and tender document (MTF), SLA and documents mentioned in Appendix-II. Said condition also provides that in case of incomplete information in any of the fields of Appendixes, the bid is liable to be treated as ineligible and tenderer technically disqualified.

6. In the instant case, admittedly petitioner failed to furnish the details in SLA and as such did not comply with Condition No.VII, which as per the tender document, is a mandatory condition.

7. In view of the above and on this ground alone, we find that the bid of petitioner was non-compliant and has been rightly rejected. With regard to contention of petitioner regarding mismatch between the CA certificate and the experience certificate, we leave the question open.

8. Petition is accordingly dismissed.