Supreme court upholds delhi hc quashing of passport and visa outsourcing tenders, ETTravelWorld

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to interfere with a Delhi High Court judgment that quashed tenders for outsourcing consular, passport and visa (CPV) services at Indian missions in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra.Upholding the high court’s judgment, a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant dismissed the Central government’s plea challenging the high court ruling but issued directions to prevent any disruption of services at the Indian missions concerned.“We are of the view that no impediment should be caused to the day-to-day functioning of the concerned establishments, pending the completion of the fresh tender process,” the bench observed.The government had challenged the Delhi High Court’s July 15 judgment, which found serious flaws in the way bids submitted by private companies were evaluated for the outsourcing contracts.The interim arrangements so permitted include engaging the existing successful L-1 bidders or any other agency to ensure uninterrupted services while a fresh tender process is completed.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.Earlier last week, the Delhi High Court had set aside the Centre’s technical evaluation process for outsourcing of Consular/Passport/Visa (CPV) services at the Indian Missions in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi in the UAE, Singapore, and Canberra in Australia and ordered the Centre to issue fresh tenders for procurement of CPV services across all four missions within a month and conclude the process at the earliest. The court passed judgment on petitions by two unsuccessful bidders — E TRAV Tech Limited and M/s Verasys Limited.The court held that the parameter-wise marks awarded to the petitioners by the authorities were “vitiated by arbitrariness, irrationality and lack of transparency”, which rendered technical evaluations unsustainable under Article 14 of the Constitution.