Bombay High Court Upholds ONGC’s Rejection of Offshore Consortium Bid; Holds Each Member Must Possess Experience for Activities Allocated to It Under Tender
Bombay High Court Upholds ONGC’s MOPU Bid Rejection; Says Consortium Members Must Individually Meet Experience Criteria for Their Assigned Roles
Facts
ONGC was developing its R-Series offshore oil and gas fields and required, among other infrastructure, a Mobile Offshore Production Unit (MOPU) connected to the riser platform for processing well fluids, power generation and allied functions. For this purpose, ONGC issued a tender dated 7 January 2026 for hiring a MOPU.
The petitioner was a consortium comprising HAL Offshore Limited, Eagle Holding Pte. Ltd. and PT Duta Marine. It submitted its technical bid in May 2026. Only two bidders participated—the petitioner consortium and Shapoorji Pallonji Energy O & M Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
During evaluation, ONGC sought several rounds of clarifications. In the third round, it asked the consortium to produce documentary evidence showing that HAL Offshore possessed the required Fleet and O&M experience and Eagle Holding possessed the required O&M experience for the activities allocated to them under the consortium MoU.
The consortium disputed ONGC’s interpretation and maintained that the MoU’s role-and-scope allocation was primarily for percentage distribution of bid value and could not be used to test each consortium member’s technical eligibility separately.
ONGC rejected the technical bid on 21 August 2026 because the consortium failed to furnish the relevant supporting experience documents.
The petitioner challenged this rejection before the Bombay High Court.
Issues
The principal issues were:
- whether the tender required each consortium member to independently possess the technical experience corresponding to the activities allocated to it in the MoU;
- whether the experience of PT Duta Marine could satisfy technical eligibility requirements for activities allocated to HAL Offshore or Eagle Holding;
- whether ONGC introduced a new or retrospective technical requirement during the clarification process;
- whether principles of natural justice were violated by giving the petitioner limited time for the third clarification;
- whether ONGC’s interpretation of its own tender conditions was arbitrary, irrational or perverse; and
- whether the Court should consider the petitioner’s financial bid merely to preserve competition.
Petitioner’s Arguments
The consortium argued that its disqualification was hyper-technical and contrary to the tender.
It contended that Clause B.1.2.1(a)-II merely required the consortium leader to hold at least 26% stake and required the MoU to indicate the respective members’ roles and percentage of bid value.
According to the petitioner, this allocation was essentially financial and did not mean that every member had to independently demonstrate the technical experience corresponding to its assigned activity.
The petitioner further relied upon the clause making the consortium leader primarily responsible for execution of the entire scope of work and argued that, so long as any consortium member possessed the requisite experience, the consortium as a whole should be treated as technically qualified.
It also alleged that ONGC’s rejection was premeditated, that the third clarification afforded less than two days to respond, and that Respondent No.2’s financial bid was opened with undue haste.
The petitioner therefore sought permission to place its own financial bid before the Court in sealed cover so that ONGC could obtain the most competitive price.
Respondent No.1 — ONGC’s Arguments
ONGC argued that the tender expressly linked the activity allocated to a consortium member with that member’s own eligibility and technical experience.
The consortium’s own MoU identified the roles, scope of work and percentage participation of HAL Offshore, Eagle Holding and PT Duta Marine.
ONGC contended that despite being given an opportunity to cure the deficiency, the petitioner failed to submit evidence demonstrating HAL Offshore’s Fleet and O&M experience and Eagle Holding’s O&M experience.
It was impermissible, according to ONGC, to rely entirely on PT Duta Marine’s technical experience where that member was allocated only a limited role.
ONGC further argued that a writ court should defer to the procuring authority’s interpretation of complex technical tender conditions unless the interpretation was manifestly arbitrary or perverse.
Respondent No.2’s Arguments
Shapoorji Pallonji supported ONGC’s interpretation.
It argued that eligibility had to be tested strictly on the basis of documents filed with the technical bid and that the petitioner could not modify or redistribute consortium responsibilities after submission.
It also opposed disclosure of its financial bid and argued that the petitioner’s financial offer was irrelevant once its technical bid had failed.
Analysis of the Law
1. Tender Was Both Activity-Specific and Member-Specific
This was the central holding.
The Court examined ITB Clauses 1.3.1, 1.3.3, 1.3.4 and 7.14(j), together with BEC Clauses B.1.2.1(a)-I, B.1.2.1(a)-II and 2.1.3.
The contractual structure expressly required consortium members themselves to satisfy the experience criteria for the activities to be performed by them.
The Court distilled the tender scheme into five propositions:
- the consortium member must itself possess experience for the activity it undertakes;
- one member’s experience cannot be attributed to another;
- the allocated activity must correspond with the member’s technical qualification;
- documentary evidence of that member’s experience must be supplied; and
- the role allocation in the MoU is substantive, not merely financial.
The tender therefore established a deliberate link between who would perform an activity and whose experience had to be demonstrated.
2. Consortium Leader’s Overall Responsibility Did Not Permit Experience Pooling
The petitioner relied on Clause 2.1.1, under which the consortium leader assumed unconditional primary responsibility for the entire scope of work.
The High Court rejected the contention that this clause allowed technical experience to be pooled freely across consortium members.
It held that overall contractual responsibility of the leader and individual technical qualification of members serve different purposes and can coexist.
A consortium leader may remain responsible to ONGC for the entire contract while each member must nevertheless possess the technical credentials required for the activity it has itself undertaken to perform.
3. Petitioner’s Own Clarification Undermined Its Case
The Court attached importance to the petitioner’s own response dated 19 August 2026.
In that communication, the petitioner effectively stated that HAL Offshore and Eagle Holding’s roles were financial in nature and that PT Duta Marine should be evaluated on the technical aspects.
The High Court found that this position itself demonstrated the absence of relevant technical experience with the members to whom the MoU had allocated those activities.
The Court held that ONGC had not created a new eligibility criterion; it was merely enforcing the tender as drafted.
Natural Justice
The petitioner argued that it had been given less than two days to respond to ONGC’s third clarification.
The High Court rejected this argument.
It noted that:
- tender submission itself had been extended six times;
- two earlier clarification rounds had already occurred;
- the third clarification merely sought basic documents such as purchase orders or contracts evidencing the members’ past experience;
- such documents should already have been available with the consortium members; and
- they were required to have been filed with the technical bid itself.
The Court therefore held that procedural fairness had been satisfied.
It also noted that the petitioner had separately invoked the Independent External Monitors mechanism, received a hearing and obtained a non-binding opinion rejecting its allegations of unfairness.
Precedent Analysis
Jai Bholenath Construction v. Chief Executive Officer, Zilla Parishad, Nanded
The petitioner relied upon this authority on natural justice and arbitrary tender evaluation.
The High Court distinguished it because, in that case, the lowest bidder had been denied the contract despite circumstances showing a flagrant procedural irregularity.
Here, by contrast, the petitioner was given clarification opportunities, asked to produce specified technical material and informed of the precise reason for rejection.
New Horizons Ltd. v. Union of India
The petitioner relied on the broader principle that experience of a consortium may sometimes be considered collectively.
The High Court effectively held that such general principles could not override the specific wording of this tender, which expressly tied each consortium member’s experience to its own allocated activity.
N.G. Projects Ltd. v. Vinod Kumar Jain
ONGC relied on this authority for judicial restraint in highly technical infrastructure tenders.
The Court accepted the broader principle that the procuring authority’s interpretation should ordinarily receive deference unless it is arbitrary, irrational, mala fide or perverse.
Prakash Asphaltings and Toll Highways (India) Ltd. v. Mandeepa Enterprises
This authority was similarly relied upon to support restraint in interfering with the employer’s interpretation of technical bid conditions.
Court’s Reasoning
The Court found ONGC’s construction of the tender entirely consistent with its language.
The consortium itself had allocated distinct activities to each member in the MoU. That allocation could not be treated as meaningless after submission merely because one member lacked the corresponding technical experience.
Allowing PT Duta Marine’s experience to qualify HAL Offshore or Eagle Holding would effectively rewrite the tender and disconnect technical eligibility from responsibility for actual performance.
The Court also rejected the argument that greater competition or a potentially cheaper financial bid justified interference.
Once a bidder fails technical eligibility, its financial bid is legally irrelevant under the award criteria.
The Court stated that it cannot rewrite tender conditions merely because the disqualified bidder claims that its price may be more competitive.
Conclusion
The Bombay High Court held that ONGC’s interpretation of the tender conditions was reasonable, contractually supported and neither perverse nor irrational.
The petitioner consortium failed to establish the requisite technical experience of HAL Offshore and Eagle Holding corresponding to the activities allocated to them in its own MoU.
Accordingly, the technical rejection was upheld and the writ petition was dismissed.
Case Details
Case: Consortium comprising HAL Offshore Limited, Eagle Holding Pte. Ltd. and PT Duta Marine v. Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited & Anr.
Citation: 2026:BHC-OS:19810-DB.
Court: High Court of Judicature at Bombay, Ordinary Original Civil Jurisdiction.
Case Number: Writ Petition (Lodging) No. 29675 of 2026.
Bench: Acting Chief Justice Ravindra V. Ghuge and Justice Gautam A. Ankhad.
Judgment by: Justice Gautam A. Ankhad.
Reserved on: 31 August 2026.
Pronounced on: 7 September 2026.
Impugned Action: ONGC’s letter dated 21 August 2026 rejecting the petitioner consortium’s technical bid in the MOPU Tender.
Subject: Public tender, consortium eligibility, member-specific technical experience, MOPU offshore infrastructure, natural justice, judicial review of tender conditions and post-bid modification.
Result: Writ petition dismissed. ONGC’s rejection of the consortium’s technical bid was upheld as consistent with the tender conditions and neither irrational nor perverse.
