One Bidder, No Reasons Given: When Urgency Erases the Record That Proves a Procurement Was Fair

The Urgency Certificate With No Reasons: Where Probity Fails Without Any Rule Being Broken

Imagine you are the officer who must approve this file. The Army's demand for anti-tank missile sights is real. BDL builds the Konkurs-M under a ₹3,131.82 crore Army contract signed in 2022 and a missile without a working sight is not much use.

The only bidder on your file is Aindri Defence Advisory. Its founders are your former Chairman and Managing Director, Siddharth Mishra and his wife. The easy answer would be to call it corruption and refuse. That easy answer is wrong.

What Is Not Wrong Start with what the facts do not show.

• Cooling-off was respected. The DPE guidelines impose a one-year cooling-off period on retired CPSE functional directors. Mishra retired in March 2023 and Aindri was incorporated in May 2024, after that year had passed.
• He has stepped back from the firm. He left it in January 2025 on joining the NCLT and his wife now holds 95%, according to the Indian Express.
• The route itself is legal. GFR Rule 166 permits a single tender when the competent authority certifies that the demand is urgent and that skipping an advertised tender is worth the extra cost.
• The firm has passed one test. Aindri has cleared technical evaluation on the GeM portal.
• Nothing illegal has been proved. No illegal act has been shown. BDL and the Mishras did not respond to the newspaper. A conflict-of-interest charge built on these facts alone would punish a man for having once held a job.

What Is Wrong

The failure lies in the visible procedure: the part of a decision that lets outsiders check it was fair. According to the Indian Express investigation, three things changed at once.

1. Competition disappeared. The 2024 and 2025 purchases of the same sights were competitive.
2. The public-sector limit disappeared. Both earlier tenders were restricted to public sector firms and were won by India Optel Ltd.
3. The reasons disappeared. The urgency certificate does not state why the demand was urgent. The single bidder that remained, the report says, had a 2024-25 balance sheet showing ₹44.43 lakh in service revenue and no property, plant or other assets. It is being asked to supply 300 precision sights and support them for at least 15 years. Each change might be defensible on its own. Together, with no reasons on record, they make an honest decision impossible to tell apart from a dishonest one.

The Real Obligation This is

why impartiality has two parts. An officer must be fair and must also be seen to be fair. The second is not vanity. In public procurement, the written record is the only evidence the taxpayer, the auditor and the losing bidder will ever see. An urgency certificate without reasons asks everyone to trust the signature alone. The resolution is not to refuse the Army. It is to rebuild the record before signing:

• write down why the demand is urgent - explain why the earlier PSU suppliers could not meet it - verify independently that a firm with no recorded plant can actually deliver - send the file to someone with no professional history with the former CMD That costs days and possibly delays delivery. That delay is the price of a decision that can be defended.