Para 8.2.6 — CONSULT_MANUAL

2. If, however, due to some exceptional and unforeseen reasons, the purchase organisation is unable to decide on the placement of the contract within the original validity period, it may request, preferably before expiry of the original validity period, all the responsive bidders to extend validity of their bids up to a suitable period. They may also be requested to extend the validity of the Bid Security for the corresponding additional period. But the bidders, who agree to extend the validity, are to do so without changing any terms, conditions, and so on, of their original tenders. Reasons for seeking extension of bid validity should be recorded by the procuring officers at the time of taking such decisions. A bidder may not agree to such a request, and this will not entail forfeiture of its Bid Security.

3. In case such a refusal by bidder

(s) to extend validity (hereinafter called not-extended bids) or withdrawal of offer within validity as per para 5.5.6 (hereinafter referred as withdrawn bids), happens:

8.2.6 Extension of Bid Validity Period 1. The entire process of scrutiny and evaluation of tenders, preparation of ranking statement and notification of award must be done expeditiously and within the original bid validity period (Rule 174

(iii) of GFR 2017).

Chapter 8: RfP Evaluation and Award of Contract a) before completion of the Techno-commercial evaluation, then the Techno-commercial evaluation (including the not-extended and withdrawn bids) shall be completed. If a not-extended or withdrawn bid qualifies in techno-commercial evaluation, financial bid

(s) of such bidders shall also be opened, and action shall be taken as per sub-para below. b) after the techno-commercial evaluation but before the completion of the financial bid evaluation, then the financial bid evaluation (including not-extended and withdrawn bids) shall be completed. i) If a not-extended or withdrawn bid happens to be the L1 bidder (lowest acceptable bidder, who is techno-commercially qualified, and would have been awarded a contract, but for his refusal to extend validity or withdrawal of bid within validity), the tender must be re-tendered. ii) Since this may take some time, Procuring Entity may cover their immediate short-term needs through an appropriate mode of procurement. iii) However, such L1 price of the not-extended or withdrawn bids shall not be taken as precedence for determining price estimates or reasonableness. iv) In certain cases, there may be multiple L1 bidders, for example, in Project Management Consultancy hiring on the basis of fixed service charge. In such cases, where a withdrawn bid also happens to be L1, re-tendering may not be necessary. The procuring entity may continue with tender finalization, proceeding with the remaining L1 bids. c) In case of QCBS system of evaluation, the proposal obtaining the highest total combined score in evaluation of quality and cost is identified which is ranked as H-1 (please refer to para 8.5.3 for the QCBS evaluation methodology). If a not-extended or withdrawn bid happens to be the H-1 bidder, the tender must be re-tendered.