NAFED Tender for Supply of Food Products in Uttar Pradesh Declared Valid

20-Mar-2026 07:37 PM

New Delhi: The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED)—an agency under the Union Ministry of Agriculture—issued a major tender for the receipt-based supply of supplementary nutritional food products worth ₹27.68 billion for the financial year 2026-27 (April–March) under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in Uttar Pradesh.

However, several companies and organizations were dissatisfied with this tender. These entities filed a petition in the Delhi High Court challenging NAFED's terms and conditions; the Court, however, dismissed the petition and upheld the validity of NAFED's terms and conditions.

The first condition of NAFED's tender stipulates that any bidder wishing to participate must possess their own manufacturing plant located within Uttar Pradesh.

The second condition requires that no legal or criminal proceedings be pending against the bidder, particularly those related to the supply of rations; furthermore, no penalties should have been imposed upon them.

A subsequent condition of the tender mandates that the bidder's annual turnover must be ₹750 million or higher, calculated on a year-by-year basis based on the figures from the preceding three financial years.

Objecting to all these conditions, the petitioners argued that they were arbitrary and violative of constitutional provisions, and urged the Court to direct NAFED to remove these conditions from its tender. However, the High Court declined to grant this request.