Bombay High Court: unregistered ethanol supplier cannot claim a right to bid in BPCL's tender

The Bombay High Court dismissed a writ petition by Alpine Ethanol Private Limited seeking a direction to let it access and bid in a tender floated by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) for the procurement of about 1,100 crore litres of Denatured Anhydrous Ethanol for 2026-27 under the Ethanol Blending Programme. Under an Expression of Interest published in January 2025, only entities already enrolled as a 'Registered Vendor' with the Integrated Ethanol Management System (IEMS) by the time of the tender could bid; the petitioner had never applied for IEMS registration before the tender was floated in October 2026, and complained only that it could not view or download the tender document. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Advait M. Sethna held that the petitioner was never eligible to participate, and that allowing it to bid despite failing to meet the eligibility criterion would discriminate against the 519 other bidders who had duly registered as IEMS vendors, violating their right to equality under Article 14.

Relying on the Supreme Court's decisions in Agmatel India Pvt. Ltd. v. Resoursys Telecom and N.G. Projects Ltd. v. Vinod Kumar Jain, the Court reiterated that the author of a tender document is best placed to interpret its own eligibility conditions, and a writ court exercising judicial review under Article 226 must ordinarily defer to that interpretation unless it is vague, uncertain, mala fide, or arbitrary — grounds the petitioner had not made out. The petition was dismissed with no order as to costs.