Highest bidder loses a Rs 16 crore mandi contract for proving its experience on assertion alone
The Supreme Court upholds the disqualification of an H1 bidder that borrowed the credentials of other firms without producing a partnership deed or any record of the claimed association.
Being the highest bidder does not cure a failure to meet the eligibility conditions. On 21 September 2026, in Micky Traders v. L.R.Y. Labour Contractor, a Division Bench of Justice K.V. Viswanathan and Justice Alok Aradhe dismissed appeals by a bidder whose winning offer of over Rs 16 crore had been set aside, holding that an eligibility criterion cannot be satisfied by an unverified assertion of identity between a bidder and unrelated third parties.
The tender
On 13 February 2026, the Market Committee issued a Detailed Notice Inviting Tender for the recovery and realisation of user charges for the use of mandi infrastructure by retail and other vehicles carrying fruits, vegetables and eatables. The contract ran for twelve months, from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, and the reserve price was fixed at Rs 12,21,58,500 per annum. Clause 11 of the tender required bidders to submit the enumerated documents in digitally signed copies.
Five bidders responded. On evaluation, the technical bid of the H1 Bidder was found responsive and its financial bid of Rs 16,51,51,000 was accepted, being the highest received. The H2 Bidder had offered Rs 15,03,33,000. The H2 Bidder then wrote to the Secretary of the Tender Committee, and subsequently moved the High Court by writ petition challenging the award.
Credentials that existed only in the assertion
The dispute turned on how the H1 Bidder had satisfied the experience requirement — the qualification a firm must possess before it may compete for a public contract. Its answer was to point to a claimed nexus with other contractor firms, resting on the association of one Ravinder Singh with those entities, and to treat their record of executed contracts as its own.
The Court found nothing behind the claim. Even taking the explanation at its highest, the Bench held, it did not carry the H1 Bidder’s case very far. No material had been placed before the Committee, or before the High Court, to substantiate the claimed nexus: no partnership deed, no certificate of registration under the Indian Partnership Act, 1932, and nothing to show the extent, nature or duration of Ravinder Singh’s association with those firms. On that state of the record the conclusion followed that an eligibility criterion cannot be satisfied by an unverified assertion of identity between a bidder and unrelated third parties.
The judgment also records that the material relied upon did not establish what it was offered to prove — a contract said to demonstrate the collection of user charges did not in fact evidence such collection, and the work was sought to be presented as one continuous contract ending on 31 December 2025 although it had been executed through different entities.
Approbating and reprobating
An independent and sufficient ground was furnished by the H1 Bidder’s own conduct. It had taken one position on the meaning of a clause and, when that reading no longer suited it, advanced the opposite reading of an identical clause. A party cannot approbate and reprobate on the construction of the same tender condition, and the Court treated that inconsistency as enough on its own to sustain the result.
The practical lesson for tendering authorities and bidders alike is narrow but firm. Experience conditions in public tenders are met by the bidding entity, and where a bidder seeks to rely on the credentials of an associated firm, the association has to be evidenced in documents capable of verification at the evaluation stage — not asserted after the award is challenged.
The limits of the challenge
Judicial review of a tender is ordinarily narrow. Courts do not sit in appeal over the evaluation of bids, and an unsuccessful bidder cannot convert a commercial disappointment into a writ petition by disagreeing with the committee’s assessment. What the H2 Bidder raised here, however, was not an evaluation preference but an eligibility failure — a question of whether the successful bidder cleared the gate at all, which is squarely within the court’s remit.
That distinction explains the outcome. Had the dispute been about the weight given to comparable experience, the High Court would have had little to do. Because it was about whether any verifiable experience had been produced, the absence of a partnership deed, a registration certificate or any record of the claimed association was decisive on its own terms.
For market committees the reminder is about the evaluation stage rather than the litigation. Documents establishing an associated firm’s credentials must be called for and verified before a technical bid is declared responsive, not reconstructed once a rival has gone to court.
Order
Finding no infirmity in the order of the High Court, the Court held that the appeals fail and dismissed them, with no order as to costs. Pending interlocutory applications were disposed of accordingly.