Delhi High Court raps ASI, Culture Ministry for opaque tender process; quashes ₹90-crore contract

The Delhi High Court recently castigated the Ministry of Culture and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) for acting in an arbitrary and opaque manner in the award of security guard tenders for centrally protected monuments [CISS Services Limited Vs Union of India]..A Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Anish Dayal held that the evaluation process lacked reasoning and unfairly excluded eligible bidders.Hence, it quashed the letters of award issued in March 2025 to SIS Limited (SIS) and directed the Ministry to initiate a fresh tender process within three months. Until then, SIS has been permitted to continue its deployment of guards to avoid disruption at the monuments."Any reasonable and prudent person would consider that these are ‘similar services’ and cannot be vastly distinguished merely on the basis of nomenclature … Mere use of the caretaker phrase does not dilute, in any manner, the core nature of service i.e. of an unarmed security guard,” the Court observed..The Ministry had floated two tenders on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) platform in July 2024 for deployment of 925 and 381 unarmed guards at ASI’s southern and central regions. When bids were opened in December 2024, 75 of 76 bidders were disqualified, leaving SIS as the only eligible contender.CISS, which has a pan-India presence and holds a licence under the Private Security Agencies Regulation Act (PSARA), was among those excluded. Its bid relied on a ₹182-crore contract with the State Bank of India (SBI) under which it deployed more than 2,200 unarmed guards at ATMs in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh between 2018 and 2022. SBI had also issued a certificate confirming that the company had provided security services and rated its performance as “excellent.”Despite this, the ASI treated the SBI work as “caretaker services” and not “security services,” contending that monument security required specialised watch and ward duties beyond those performed at bank ATMs. The counsel for the Union of India and ASI argued that the decision of the tender committee was based on strict compliance with eligibility conditions.SIS to maintained that it had met all requirements.CISS challenged the decision with Senior Advocate Ashish Mohan arguing that the SBI contract squarely satisfied the eligibility conditions, both in terms of value and scope, and that disqualifying the company on the basis of terminology was perverse. He stressed that CISS had also cleared the other two main parameters — turnover and PSARA licence — and that the exclusion resulted in a situation where only one bidder remained..The Bench agreed with the petitioner and found that the tendering authority’s reasoning was opaque. “There is total silence and opacity in the manner in which the authority arrived at this decision. Clearly, the petitioner was at a loss in understanding as to why they had been disqualified,” the Court said referring to the Technical Evaluation Committee’s cryptic one-line justification.It emphasised that both the SBI contract and the ASI tenders involved round-the-clock deployment of unarmed guards to regulate entry, maintain vigilance and ensure safety. The difference lay only in context - ATMs versus monuments. “Having passed muster on both turnover and PSARA registration, being deleted on the basis of the proposed ‘mismatch’ in experience contract with SBI using the word caretaker cannot be accepted,” the Bench said.The Court further criticised the exclusion of 75 out of 76 bidders, noting that the tendering authority could have sought clarifications rather than eliminating nearly all competition. Hence, the Court quashed the March 27 letters of award issued to SIS Ltd. and directed the Ministry of Culture to float fresh tenders within three months. SIS will continue its services until the re-tender is completed..CISS Services Ltd. was represented by Senior Advocate Ashish Mohan with advocates Arush Bhandari, Shimran Shah and Santosh Kushwaha..Union of India and ASI were represented by Central Government Standing Counsel Vikram Jetly with advocates Shreya Jetly, Naveen (SSA) and Gokul (GP)..SIS Limited was represented by advocates Anupam Kishore Sinha, Pradeep K. Tiwari, Apoorv Jha and Sahitya Srivastava..[Read Judgment]