In Brief
The Supreme Court reversed a Delhi High Court decision that had quashed the rejection of a bidder's technical proposal in a JICA-funded Bullet Train project tender. The Court held that in foreign sovereign-funded mega projects where a lending agency exercises control over bid evaluation and the bidding documents form part of the loan agreement, judicial review is far more restricted than in ordinary government contracts. The Court found no mala fides or favouritism and held that the High Court wrongly interfered with the lending agency's decision to reject an unsigned form as material non-conformity, wrongly equated differently-situated bidders at different evaluation stages, and wrongly invalidated confidentiality clauses integral to the loan agreement. The appeal was allowed and the High Court judgment was quashed.
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