Para 5.3 — NONCONSULT_MANUAL

2. In e-procurement, all tenders uploaded by bidders are received, safeguarded, and opened online on the portal as detailed in ‘Appendix 3: Electronic Procurement (e-Procurement) and e-Auction’ of the Manual for Procurement of Goods, 2024.

3. In offline tenders, receipt and custody of bids shall be done in a transparent manner to maintain the credibility of the process. The following guidelines should be adhered to for receipt and custody of bids:

5.3. Opening of Bids 1. Immediately after the deadline for bid submission, the procuring entity shall proceed to the bid opening. If the specified date of Bid Opening falls on is subsequently declared a holiday or closed day for the Procuring Entity, the Bids shall be opened at the appointed time on the next working day. In offline tenders, the BOC shall comprise one officer each from the procuring entity and Associated/ integrated Finance.

5.5. Bidding Invitation Process- Risks and Mitigations

Risk Mitigation 1. Exceptions to an open tender process are abused, leading to single source processes. Rigorously follow the conditions under which open tendering can be dispensed with. 2. When short lists are used, the process of preparation of short lists may be nontransparent and all eligible firms may not be included, and some ineligible firms may get included. Registration of bidders/contractors: All major procuring Departments must keep a list of registered bidders for use in restricted tendering. Publicise even restricted bids on your website. Bidders for LTE/ SLTE may be transparently selected with the approval of CA. 3. Pre-qualification criteria: PQB has the potential of getting misused or being applied without considering the restrictive nature of competition. PQC should be relevant to the Lay down criteria when two stage tendering is warranted. Also lay down model PQC criteria for diverse types of procurements.

a) The authorised representatives of bidders, who intend to attend the tender opening in OTE/ GTE/ SLTE are to bring with them letters of authority from the corresponding bidder. The prescribed format for the letter of authority for attending the bid opening should be given in the tender document. All bid-opening activities should be carried out demonstrably before such a gathering. The prescribed format for the bid opening attendance sheet and report is given in Annexure 5; b) At a prescheduled date and time, the BOC of the day should get the tender box opened after ensuring and demonstrating that the seal on the box has not been tampered with. All bids should be collected from the tender box. Bids for tenders not opening on that day should be put back into the box, and the box resealed. Sometimes, there would be tenders dropped wrongly into this tender box. Such wrongly dropped tenders with appropriate endorsement should be put into the appropriate box or sent to the Tender Committee (TC) concerned if the date of opening is over. The bids for different tenders opening on the day (including oversized bids, which were submitted to designated officers) should be sorted, and a count for each tender should be announced and recorded, particularly noting any modifying/altering/withdrawal of bids. BOC should ensure and demonstrate that bid envelopes are duly sealed and untampered. Late bids should be separately counted but kept aside and not opened. In the case of an advertised tender enquiry or limited tender enquiry, late bids (that is, bids received after the specified date and time for receipt of bids) should not be considered (Rule 202 of GFR 2017); c) The technical bids will be opened on the pre-announced date and the financial proposals shall remain sealed and shall be opened publicly only for those firms that have qualified technically. d) After opening, every tender shall be numbered serially (say 3/14 – if it is the third bid out of 14 total), initialled, and dated on the first page by the BOC. Each page of the price schedule or letter attached to it shall also be similarly initialled, particularly the prices, delivery period, and so on, which shall also be circled and initialled along with the date. Any other page containing significant information should also be dealt with similarly. Blank tenders, if any, should be marked accordingly by the BOC. The original (and duplicate, if any) copies in a tender set are to be marked accordingly by the BOC; e) Erasure/cutting/overwriting/use of whitener/columns left unfilled in tenders, if any, shall be initialled along with the date and time and numbered by the officials opening the tenders and total number of such noticed alterations (or the absence of any alteration) should be explicitly marked on the first page of the bid. Wherever quantity/amount is written only in figures, the BOC should write them in words. All rebates/discounts should be similarly circled, numbered, and signed. In the absence of any alteration/overwriting/whitener/ blanks, the remark “no corrections noted” should be written. Similarly, the absence of discounts should be marked with “no discounts noted;” f) The BOC is to announce the salient features of the tenders such as description and specification of the services, terms of delivery, delivery period, if any, whether EMD furnished or not, and any other distinctive feature of the tender for the information of the representatives attending the tender opening. No clarifications by bidders should be entertained or allowed to be recorded during the bid opening. BOC has no authority to reject any tender at the tender opening stage; g) Proper sealing and codification need to be done on reference samples as well for samples which accompany the bid57. These should be kept for reference under lock and key. Details should be recorded in the sample register maintained in the opening section. h) Financial instruments should be noted in the bid opening report/register and handed over to the Finance Section for safe custody and monitoring; and i) A bid opening report containing the names of the bidders (serial number wise), salient features of the tenders, as read out during the public opening of tenders, will be prepared by the tender opening officers, and duly signed by them along with the date and time. The tenders that have been opened, list of the representatives attending the tender opening, and bid opening report are to be handed over to the nominated purchase officer and an acknowledgement obtained for him. The name of the bidder proposed prices shall be read aloud and recorded when the financial proposals are opened. No modification to financial proposals is permitted. The Procuring Entity shall prepare the minutes of the public opening. Format at Annexure 5 may be used for this purpose. When electronic submission of proposals is used, this information shall be posted online. j) Similar procedure shall later be followed during Financial Bid Opening in case of multiple-envelop bidding.

2. As far as the bidders who have participated in a tender (participating bidders), for purpose of transparency, comparative summary of Technical (compliance details) and of Financials bids (including QCBS calculations, wherever applicable) should also be accessible to them, but not necessarily to public at large, unless sought and is permissible under the RTI act.

3. Bidders may have genuine concern about Techno-commercial and operational trade secrets, if their full technical and financial bids are accessible to their competitors or public at large. This concern may get aggravated in complicated EPC/ PPP/ Consultancy procurements. Technical/ financial bids should not be made accessible to public at large, and a call needs to be taken based on sensitivity of details in the bids to restrict access of even participating bidders to full technical/ financial bids of their competitors. Decision of procuring Entity to share or not share the full technical bids with other participating bidders, should be clearly brought out in the Tender Documents.

4. However, a clause may be added to the tender documents reserving right of the Procurement Entity and the eProcurement portal to provide access to bidders’ technical/ financial bids to other participating bidders, in addition to comparative summary of Technical and financial bids of all participating bidders.

Transparency and Protecting Third-Party Rights of Bidders 1. Objectives of transparency in eProcurement are amply served if all data relating to the Tender and Award of Contract are accessible to public.

Chapter 5: Bid Invitation Process

Risk Mitigation quality requirements, and neither be very stringent nor very lax to restrict/facilitate the entry of bidders. These criteria should be clear, unambiguous, exhaustive, and yet specific. Also, there should be fair competition. 4. Invitation to tender (an open bid) is not well publicised or gives insufficient time, thereby restricting the number of bidders that participate. Publicity and adequate time for bid submission must be ensured. Require a higher-level approval for short bid submission period. 5. Evaluation criteria are not set from the beginning or are not objective or not clearly stated in the tender documents, thereby making them prone to being abused. Objective, relevant and clearly stated evaluation criteria must be specified in the tender document.

1. To safeguard against a bidder with drawing or altering its/ his bid during the bid validity period in the case of advertised (OTE and GTE tenders) or special limited tender enquiry Bid Security (also known as Earnest Money Deposit (EMD)) is to be obtained from the bidders along with their bids. 2. The bidders should be asked to furnish bid security along with their bids58..Amount of bid security should ordinarily range between two (2) to five (5) per cent of the estimated value of the services to be procured. The amount of bid security, rounded off to the nearest thousands of Rupees, as determined by the Procuring Entity, is to be indicated in the tender documents. The procuring Entity may, if considered justified, stipulate an upper ceiling on the bid security amount, in larger tenders, so as not to restrict competition. 3. Form of Security: The bid security may be obtained in the form of Insurance Surety Bonds59,account payee demand draft, or banker's cheque or Bank Guarantee (including e-Bank Guarantee)60 issued/ confirmed61 by any of the Scheduled Banks (as defined in section 2

(e) of the RBI Act 1934) or payment online in an acceptable form, safeguarding the purchaser’s interest in all respects. In case the bid security is more than a threshold (Rupees five lakh) and in case of foreign bidders in GTE tenders it may be in the form of a bank guarantee (in equivalent Foreign Exchange amount and must conform to the Uniform Rules for Demand Guarantees (URDG 758) – an international convention regulating international securities62) issued/ confirmed by any of the scheduled bank in India in an acceptable form. The bid security is normally to remain valid for a period of 45(forty-five) days beyond the final bid validity period. 4. In place of a Bid security, Procuring Entities after seeking approval of the competent authority may consider asking Bidders to sign a Bid securing declaration (BSD), accepting that if they withdraw or modify their Bids during the period of validity, or if they are awarded the contract and they fail to submit a performance security, or to sign the contract, before the deadline defined in the tender documents, they shall be suspended for the period of time specified in the BSD from being eligible to submit Bids/Proposals for contracts with the procuring entity. 5. In appropriate cases, Submission of the bid security may be exempted with the Competent Authority’s (CA’s) approval, especially in the case of indigenisation/development tenders, limited tenders, and procurements directly from the manufacturer or authorised agents, bidders that are currently registered (firms should normally be registered for the particular trade group (group of services) and monetary values, as decided by the procuring entity),

Chapter 6: Forms of Securities, Prices, Payment Terms and Price Variations 6.1. Forms of Security 6.1.1. Bid Security (Rule 170 of GFR 2017)

Chapter 6: Forms of Securities, Prices, Payment Terms and Price Variations and will also continue to remain registered during the bid validity period with the concerned Ministry/ Department/ Procuring Entity. Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) as defined in MSE Procurement Policy issued by Department of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) and registered Startups as recognized by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) (please refer to para 1.10.4) are exempt from payment of EMD. In case the bidder falls in these categories, the bidder should furnish a certified copy of its valid registration details.

6. A bidder’s bid security shall be forfeited if the bidder withdraws or amends its/his tender or impairs or derogates from the tender in any respect within the period of validity of the tender or if the successful bidder fails to furnish the required performance security, or to sign the contract within the specified period.

7. Bid securities of the unsuccessful bidders should be returned to them at the earliest after expiry of the final bid validity period and latest by the 30th day after the award of the contract. Bid security should be refunded to the successful bidder on receipt of a performance security. However, in case of two packet or two stage tendering, Bid securities of unsuccessful bidders during first stage i.e., technical evaluation etc. should be returned within 30 days of declaration of result of first stage i.e., technical evaluation etc.63