POPULAR INTERNATIONAL (PVT.) LTD. vs GOVERNMENT OF PUNJAB through Secretary Health S

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POPULAR INTERNATIONAL (PVT.) LTD. VS GOVERNMENT OF PUNJAB through Secretary Health S. 26---Punjab Procurement Rules, 2014, Rr. 67 & 67A---Public procurement---Technical disqualification---End-user evaluation---Supervisory jurisdiction of Punjab Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA)---Scope---The procuring agency declared bids of respondents non-responsive based on end-user evaluation---Upon complaint, the findings were set aside and respondents were declared technically responsive---The petitioner (a competing bidder) challenged this intervention through filing of the present constitutional petition---Question requiring determination before the High Court was "whether the Punjab Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) could set aside technical evaluation findings and declare bidders responsive in exercise of its supervisory jurisdiction?"---Held: The supervisory jurisdiction conferred upon PPRA is not illusory; rather, it is intended to safeguard the integrity of procurement processes and to prevent mis-procurement---MD PPRA did not embark upon an independent technical reassessment of the products, as revealed by the impugned order---The reasoning assigned by the MD PPRA could not be termed extraneous or perverse---Technical disqualification must be grounded in objective criteria traceable to the bidding documents or statutory standards---Where rejection is founded upon subjective impressions of end users and in absence of demonstrable scientific validation or regulatory non-compliance, such determination becomes vulnerable to challenge on the touchstone of transparency and equal treatment---Once the foundational basis of rejection, i.e. arbitrary end-user evaluation, was declared void ab initio, the natural corollary was restoration of the complainants' status as technically compliant bidders, subject to fulfilment of other codal requirements---Impugned order did not call for any interference---Constitutional petition was dismissed, in circumstances.

POPULAR INTERNATIONAL (PVT.) LTD. vs GOVERNMENT OF PUNJAB through Secretary Health S — 2026 CLC 818 LAHORE-HIGH-COURT-LAHORE

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