KATHMANDU: In a serious breach of Nepal’s public procurement laws, the Department of Passports (DoP) is unlawfully intending to award a multi-billion-rupee e-passport tender to French firm IDEMIA by manipulating tender criteria, ignoring technical disqualifications, and bypassing mandatory procedural safeguards.

Despite clear findings from a technical sub-committee that IDEMIA’s proposal for one of the packages was non-compliant and required further review by the Public Procurement Monitoring Office (PPMO), the Evaluation Committee pushed through its selection without obtaining the legally required opinion.

On Kartik 26, 2081 B.S. (November 11, 2024), the DoP published two major international tenders for electronic passport systems. Package-I involved the procurement of systems for data management, while Package-II was for the supply of 6.4 million e-passport booklets along with personalization and printing equipment.

By the submission deadline of Falgun 9, 2081 B.S. (February 21, 2025), international companies including IDEMIA, Muehlbauer (Germany), IRIS Corporation (Malaysia), PWPW (Poland), and Veridos (Germany) had submitted bids for one or both packages.

As required, the department formed a five-member Evaluation Committee led by Director General Tirtharaj Aryal, supported by a 12-member Technical Sub-Committee chaired by IT Director Sunil Kumar K.C. The Sub-Committee was tasked with verifying compliance with exhaustive technical specifications—238 requirements for Package-I and 297 for Package-II.

Under Nepal’s procurement laws for “Goods” category tenders, only bids that meet all technical criteria are eligible for financial consideration. Bidders must demonstrate how they meet each technical requirement, and simple claims of compliance are deemed insufficient.

The Technical Sub-Committee submitted a detailed evaluation, flagging incomplete or unsupported claims and requesting clarifications. However, bidders were explicitly barred from submitting new information beyond their original proposals.

According to the final technical report, Muehlbauer’s bid for both packages failed to meet all criteria and was deemed non-responsive. In Package-I, IDEMIA’s bid also fell short and required a formal opinion from the PPMO—a step that was never completed. In contrast, only IDEMIA and Veridos were found technically compliant in Package-II.

Despite these assessments, the Evaluation Committee overruled the Technical Sub-Committee’s findings and approved IDEMIA’s non-compliant bid for Package-I and Muehlbauer’s technically failed bids for both packages.

One of the Technical Sub-Committee members even withdrew his signature from the final evaluation report two weeks later, signaling internal dissent. The department made the evaluation results public on 2082/01/30 B.S. (May 13, 2025), and moved to open the financial proposals on 2082/02/14 B.S. (May 28, 2025).

This decision marks yet another instance of apparent favoritism toward IDEMIA, which has been consistently awarded contracts and variation orders for Nepali passport printing over the past 15 years.

The repeated selection of IDEMIA, including in situations where it failed to meet basic technical standards, raises serious concerns about transparency and accountability in Nepal’s public procurement process.