JABALPUR, India, Dec. 20 -- Madhya Pradesh High Court issued the following judgment/order on Nov. 20:

1. Leave is sought by learned Senior Counsel for the Respondent to file reply and by counsel for petitioner to file supplementary affidavit.

2. Leave is granted.

3. The documents are taken on record.

4. Petitioner impugns the condition imposed by the Board of Secondary Education, Bhopal Madhya Pradesh in its Notice Inviting Tender (Second Call) dated 04.11.2025. The petitioner is aggrieved by the tender condition, whereby the tender is restricted to Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and also the requirement of having a turnover of Rs.1500 Crores in 3 preceding years and a net worth of Rs.1000/- Crores.

5. Learned counsel for petitioner submits that such a high requirement is unwarranted since the tender value is only about Rs.10-15 Crores. He further submits that there is no justification as to why only PSUs are permitted to participate and private player are being excluded.

6. Per contra, learned Senior Counsel for the respondent submits that the Notice Inviting Tender itself stipulates that the project is sensitive project and its entails installation and commissioning of CCTV Surveillance System for the conduct of Board Examination for Class 10 th and 12 th . Learned Senior Counsel submits that in view of the past experience of the State where several issues had arisen with regard to examination held for admission to colleges and recruitment to certain posts a decision was taken by the Board for being extra cautious to exclude private players.

7. Reference may be had to the Notice Inviting Tender where under the heading about the project, the tender stipulates as under :

"The Board of Secondary Education, Madhya Pradesh, is entrusted with the responsibility of conducting the Board Examinations for Classes 10th and 12th across the state. For this purpose MPBSE daily identifies and designates examination centres. The examination centres will be finalized by MPBSE to accommodate approximately 16 lakh students expected to appear in the Board Examinations for the Academic Session 2025-26.

MPBSE is responsible for ensuring that the exams are conducted in a fair, safe, and secure environment in order to uphold a transparent and effective examination process. In this regard, the MP Board has decided to install and deploy a CCTV surveillance system in the highly sensitive centres of the Board during the conduct of the 10th and 12th Board Examinations for 2025-26. Therefore, a Request for Proposal (RFP) it issued to invite suitable Government PSU bidders who can provide a comprehensive surveillance system for examination centres as per the requirements of the MP Board to carry out CCTV surveillance during the conduct of exams. Under this RFP, the Board intends to establish a CCTV surveillance system across all the selected exams centers which are highly sensitive in nature, and the live feed from all these centers will be transmitted to the Command and Control Center for live monitoring at the headquarter level.

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://mphc.gov.in/upload/jabalpur/MPHCJB/2025/WP/44813/WP_44813_2025_FinalOrder_20-11-2025_digi.pdf)

Disclaimer: Curated by HT Syndication.