Vidyasagar Vijaykumar Kamboj v. The State of Maharashtra & Ors.
Background
A contractor's bid for a municipal tender in Latur was rejected at the technical-evaluation stage because he could not produce a certificate from the tendering authority certifying that he had properly completed "geo-tagging" of the work site (a GPS-based site verification requirement). The contractor claimed he had actually visited the site, done the geo-tagging, and applied for the certificate in time, but the authorities simply refused or delayed signing it, and that this was not the first time he had faced such treatment from the same authority. He challenged his disqualification before the High Court, and the matter reached the Supreme Court after the High Court proceedings.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that where a bidder has genuinely applied for a geo-tagging certificate well within time but the authorities fail to sign or delay issuing it, the bidder cannot be disqualified for non-submission of that certificate: this is a curable defect, not a valid ground for rejection, since obtaining the certificate is not within the bidder's control. The Court further held that minor deviations in GPS coordinates, timestamp differences, or loss of metadata during upload cannot be treated as fundamental defects invalidating an otherwise compliant bid. The judgment noted a broader pattern across many cases where tendering authorities misuse the geo-tagging clause on flimsy technical grounds to unfairly eliminate genuine bidders and favour others, undermining the very transparency the requirement was meant to promote. The Court directed that High Courts remain vigilant against such misuse and read between the lines when a party alleges injustice in technical evaluation on this ground, and disposed of the appeal and connected writ petition with these observations sent to all High Courts.
Lesson Learnt
A government authority cannot disqualify a bidder for failing to produce a document (like a certificate) that the authority itself was responsible for signing but withheld or delayed: procedural technicalities cannot be weaponised to unfairly exclude genuine participants from public tenders, and courts will scrutinise such disqualifications closely.