Para 4.10 — WORKS_MANUAL

On the due date and appointed time, as mentioned in the bid document, the Bid Opening Committee (BOC - comprising one officer each from the procuring entity and Associated/ integrated Finance) will open the bids in the presence of the intending bidders or their representative. The bidder’s name, the bid prices and conditional and unconditional discount, if any will be announced by the procuring entity during opening of bids. A record of opening of bids will be maintained, including signatures of bidders present.

In e-procurement, all tenders uploaded by tenderers are received, safeguarded and opened online on the portal as detailed in Appendix 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:

4.10 Receipt and Opening of Bids The tender received by the procuring entity after the deadline for the submission of tender, shall not be opened and shall be returned to the contractors or contractors that submitted it. No submission is allowed in e-Procurement after the submission deadline.

i) The procuring entity shall maintain tender boxes for receiving the bids at suitable locations which would facilitate security and easy access to bidders. If required, Tender boxes should be separate for each day of the week of tender opening and should be sealed by the Bid Opening Committee (BOC) of the day. The tender box shall have two locks. Key of one lock will be with the head of the office and the other key with the official nominated by him; ii) Bids received by courier shall be deposited in the tender box by the Dispatch Section till the date and time of bid opening. Bids sent by telex, cable or facsimile are to be ignored and rejected.; and iii) For bulky/ oversized bids which cannot be dropped into tender boxes, the officials authorised to receive such bids shall maintain proper records and provide a signed receipt with date and time to the bearer of the bid. He will also sign on the cover, duly indicating the date and time of receipt of the tender(s). Names and designations of at least two such authorised officers should be mentioned in the bid documents iv) The authorised representatives of bidders, who intend to attend the tender opening in OTE/ GTE, 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 bidding 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 are given at Annexure 2;

v) At a prescheduled date and time, the BOC of the day should get the particular 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;

vi) 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. As the bids are to be submitted in hardbound form, signing of covering letters and index page by all the committee members is sufficient;

vii) Erasure/ cutting/ overwriting/ use of whitener/ columns left unfilled in tenders, if any, shall be initialled along with 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;” viii) The BOC is to announce the salient features of the tenders such as description and specification of the goods, quoted price, terms of delivery, delivery period, discount, if any, whether EMD furnished or not, and any other special feature of the tender for the information of the representatives attending the tender opening. No clarifications by tenderers should be entertained or allowed to be recorded during the bid opening. It should be understood that BOC has no authority to reject any tender at the tender opening stage;

ix) A bid opening report containing the names of the tenderers (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.