Right to Information Act (RTI) in Procurement

The Right to Information Act (RTI), enacted in 2005, gives every Indian citizen the right to request information from public authorities including all government departments, PSUs, and funded bodies. In procurement, RTI is a powerful tool for bidders to obtain evaluation records, competitor bid prices, award justifications, and contract terms, information that enables both competitive intelligence and accountability challenges.

What is RTI in government procurement?

The RTI Act requires any "public authority" (which includes all central and state government bodies, PSUs, and bodies substantially funded by government) to provide requested information within 30 days. For procurement, information that can be obtained includes:

Evaluation records: The Tender Evaluation Committee's meeting minutes, eligibility assessment sheets, and reasons for disqualification of specific bidders.

Bid prices: L1, L2, and L3 prices and the priced BOQs of all bidders after the award is made (once the procurement process is complete, bid prices are typically disclosable unless they contain genuine trade secrets).

Award justification: The basis on which the L1 bidder was recommended and the TAA's approval noting.

Contract terms: The signed contract including the awarded BOQ rates, contract conditions, and any variations or amendments after execution.

Past award data: Historical tender results, which bidder won, at what price, for what scope, for previous tenders from the same department.

This information has significant competitive intelligence value. Understanding what L1 bid on a similar past contract, what items were priced high and low, and what the government's estimated cost was allows a bidder to price future bids more precisely.

RTI is also the primary accountability tool for aggrieved bidders. If you were disqualified on a ground you believe was pretextual, an RTI request for the evaluation committee's working paper can reveal whether the disqualification criterion was actually applied consistently across all bidders, the most common form of discriminatory evaluation.

Why it matters for bidders

RTI is the cheapest and most powerful intelligence tool available to Indian government procurement bidders. The application fee is Rs 10. The turnaround time is 30 days. The information available includes everything your competitors' BD teams spend millions to gather through relationships.

Systematic RTI practice, filing for evaluation results after every tender you bid on, requesting past award data for tenders you are planning to bid, builds a competitive pricing database that is impossible to replicate through any other means. The BidIndia Discover platform surfaces some of this historical tender data, but RTI allows you to go deeper on specific departments and specific bid structures.

When you are disqualified and believe the disqualification was unfair, RTI is the first step before any escalation. You need the documentation to understand what actually happened before deciding whether to file a CVC complaint, approach the IEM, or challenge in court.

Example

A civil contractor is disqualified from a Rs 8 crore building tender on the stated ground that their solvency certificate did not meet the minimum requirement. The contractor knows their solvency certificate was for the correct amount and validity period. They file an RTI requesting the evaluation committee's solvency certificate verification records for all bidders. The response reveals that another bidder with a solvency certificate of lower validity was marked as qualified. The contractor files a CVC complaint with the RTI response as evidence. The CVC directs a re-evaluation.

Key rules / thresholds

• Application fee: Rs 10 (can be paid as postal order, DD, or online).
• Response deadline: 30 days (10 days for matters affecting life or liberty).
• First appeal: to the designated First Appellate Authority within 30 days of response or expiry of response period.
• Second appeal: to the Central Information Commission (CIC) for central bodies, State Information Commission for state bodies.
• Information that may be withheld: trade secrets, information affecting national security, third-party personal information. These exemptions are often incorrectly invoked for procurement records and can be challenged on appeal.