Supreme Court upholds quashing of passport, visa service tenders at Indian missions

The court said the Centre is free to allow existing incumbents to continue providing services across all four missions until a fresh Request for Proposal (RFP) is issued and work is allotted to successful bidders.

It added that the government can also temporarily allot the work in all missions till the successful L1 bidders, whose allotments have been set aside by the high court. This will be a temporary arrangement at their own risk and subject to the outcome of the fresh allocation exercise.

The bench said that the Centre can evolve any other mechanism to provide services for any of its missions, in a manner deemed appropriate, till a fresh allocation of work is done in accordance with the HC directions.

Centre’s challenge

Quashing the tender process, the Delhi High Court on July 15 held that the bidders’ technical evaluation was arbitrary, opaque, and violative of the principles of fairness and transparency.

Challenging this, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said, “After the HC order, our embassies and missions are running the work which they are not supposed to. We don’t have manpower. Only emergency services are being tackled, like renewal or passport, giving of visa, etc.”

Justice Bagchi pointed out, “It was taken into consideration when they (HC) said that the earlier arrangement shall continue”.

Hinting at it being a “sponsored petition”, Mehta said, “Even the petitioner who approached the HC requested that the earlier incumbent, outgoing man, should continue. This has been happening since 2011. Whenever their tenure ends, some litigation is filed, and he continues.”

“This time, we decided that we will not permit that to happen. He will have to go and participate in the open tendering process. In the meantime, with whatever difficulty we face, we will handle the situation for that limited period. Our embassy staff is diverted.”

Centre’s reasons

The CJI said that the government had invited the Delhi High Court order by not giving reasons.

Mehta sought to explain why the reasons were not shown. “Reasons are assigned by all (technical evaluation committees). The ASG requested the court to look into it. The court rightly said that unless you share it with the original petitioner, we will not look into it. The successful party objected, saying, ‘Why should our details be shown to a third party?’ That’s why they were not shown”.

Justice Bagchi said, “The High Court says that the terms governing the assessment of bids were not clearly reflected and that they created an unworkable situation. If that is so, then as per the law declared by this Court, you cannot change the terms of a tender document after the process has begun.”

Mehta urged it to allow him to approach the high court and show the reasons, but the bench did not agree.

CJI Kant said they could only permit them to avail services of some agency for a few months while the Delhi High Court order is implemented.