Before you can bid: registrations, the digital signature and the file

The one thing every e-tender needs

A bid on a government portal is signed, not merely uploaded. The Central Public Procurement Portal says so in one line: a “DSC of Class 3 category issued by a licensed Certifying Authority (CA) needs to be obtained for efiling on the eTendering Portal.” NIC's bid-submission guidelines add that a bidder should procure and keep ready a valid signing certificate “well in advance”.

Class 3 is the class with a person behind it. CPPP describes it as “the highest level where the person needs to present himself or herself in front of a Registration Authority (RA)”; the Controller of Certifying Authorities allows that check by Aadhaar-based biometric verification, by paper application with a physical appearance, or by video verification, with the private key held on a hardware device.

The certificate comes as “two pairs of Keys (One for Signing and One for Encryption)”: one signs what the bidder uploads, the other encrypts the bid. State portals ask for both by name: Chhattisgarh's FAQ lists “Digital Signing & Encryption Certificates”.

Who may issue one is the CCA's decision, and the CCA publishes the list of licensed Certifying Authorities: “the same class and/or type of certificates issued by all CAs have the same level of assurance and trust”. This page names no issuer. The term is DSC, Class 3.

Enrolling on CPPP and the NIC state instances

Enrolment is the step between owning a certificate and being able to bid. NIC's guidelines put it in one sentence: “e-Procurement requires the bidders to enrol on the CPP Portal, using a valid Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) and Valid email address.” The portal's ePublishing half needs no enrolment, because no bid goes online there.

Enrolment costs nothing. An NHPC notice inviting bids on CPPP says so in the buyer's own words: “Enrolment on the CPP Portal is free of charge.” That notice still asks for a “Class II or Class III” certificate, older wording that survives on many notices, while CPPP's own page says Class 3.

It is done once, in advance, and in an order: enrol online, map the DSC e-token to the login, prepare the documents, pay the fee and earnest money as the tender specifies, and freeze the bid. Nothing arrives by hand: “Offline documents will not be handled through this system.” Each state instance is the same software with its own enrolment, so a bidder enrols on the instance hosting the tender; they are listed in The portals.

The portal is particular about file types: “Generally, the permitted file format in the portal are pdf / xls / rar/ dwf/ jpg formats.” Anything else is converted before the day. How far ahead a fee or an EMD is paid, and the portal's idle logout, are in Submitting on a NIC portal. Terms: bidder enrolment, CPPP.

Registering as a seller on GeM

GeM is a marketplace, so its registration is a seller profile rather than a bidder enrolment. “There are no charges or fee for getting registered”, and the checklist says who does it: “Registration on GeM should be done only by an Authorized Person (Director of the Organization or a Key Person/Proprietor)”. The FAQ's list of who qualifies is longer (owner, proprietor, karta, partner, director, chief executive, chairman, president or another authorised person), and the same person may register as a seller of products and as a service provider.

The identity, tax, bank and return details the profile asks for, and the value above which an order needs a GSTIN, are in Selling on GeM. The term is GeM.

Railways and the PSUs

Indian Railways runs its own system, IREPS, and its registration guide names two prerequisites: a signing certificate from a CCA-licensed Certifying Authority, and “Install Java (JRE) on your computer.” Identity is the entity's: “PAN number of the entity is mandatory for all Indian entities except Govt. departments.” Registration is not approval. Approval of vendors runs through UVAM, through which “all the activities related to approval of vendors has been digitized”, with requests submitted from the vendor's IREPS account.

The public sector undertakings each keep their own door.

• BHEL lists its tenders on its corporate site and sends suppliers to SUVIDHA to register.
• SAIL runs its tender portal on mjunction's platform, with its own signing component.
• NHPC carries a vendor-empanelment link while its bids go through CPPP: “The Techno-commercial Bid and Price Bid to be submitted on-line at Central Public Procurement e-Portal”.
• GAIL publishes tenders on its own site; SPARSH is for after the award, a portal “for ingestion of digitally signed PDF copy of invoices, credit notes & retention release request”.

The term is vendor registration.

State portals that register differently

The states that do not run NIC's software register bidders their own way.

Andhra Pradesh charges a registration fee on paper and does not collect it: “Presently the registration fee is waived off. However it is for a limited period only.” The same FAQ describes how an EMD instrument travels there: a BG or DD is “scanned and should be attached to the technical bid during submission”, with the originals handed over “during the technical bid opening”.

Chhattisgarh lists who may register: “Public Ltd., Private Ltd., Sole Proprietorship, Joint Venture, Consortium, Partnership, Others”.

Gujarat's portal is run by (n)Code for the state's departments, and the state's own page describes a habit the NIC portals do not share: the system “allows the supplier/contractor to modify his bid even after the bid is submitted online”, but only “till the tender bid submission closing time specified by the department.”

Karnataka, Telangana and Bihar run their own systems too, linked from The portals.

The registrations that change the money

This is general information; confirm with the tender document and your adviser.

Two registrations are not about access. They change what a tender costs to enter.

Udyam registration is the proof the MSE policy runs on: the Ministry's FAQ treats it as the eligibility document. What the policy gives, and what it does not, is What the MSE policy gives and does not. GFR Rule 170 is where the exemption from bid security lives; who it covers, and the declaration that replaces a deposit, are EMD exemptions and the bid securing declaration.

DPIIT start-up recognition is the other. GeM's checklist asks a recognised start-up for its recognition number, which the checklist calls the DIPP number. The Works Manual 2025 provides for prior-turnover and prior-experience conditions to be relaxed for DPIIT-recognised start-ups; the terms are Similar work and turnover. Terms: Udyam, DPIIT start-up.

The file a tender asks for

Registration gets a bidder through the door. The tender document then asks to see a file, and it has much the same shape from one buyer to the next. What follows is the vocabulary of that file; the list that binds is always the tender document's own.

Identity and tax. The entity's PAN (mandatory on IREPS for every Indian entity that is not a government department) and its GSTIN, which GeM's checklist attaches to the billing address. A bank account with its IFSC, “which will be used for receiving payments”.

Financial proof. Income-tax returns and audited statements; GeM's checklist asks for “Income Tax Return Details (ITR Form and ITR acknowledgment) for the last three years”. A turnover figure, which a works tender asks a chartered accountant to certify: the Works Manual's criterion reads “as certified by Chartered Accountant”.

Experience proof. Completion certificates and work orders for “similar work”, read the way the tender defines the phrase; what counts as similar is Similar work and turnover, and a bid put in by more than one firm together is Joint ventures in works tenders.

Declarations. The model goods document puts the bid securing declaration at Form 7, “Documents Relating To Bid Security”; that template says a bidder “must furnish” one in lieu of bid security, while GFR Rule 170(iii) says the buyer “may require” it. The declaration has teeth: breaking it “shall be considered as a violation of Code on Integrity and they shall be debarred for the time period specified in the BSD”. A tender may also ask for a declaration that the bidder is not debarred; the rule behind that is GFR Rule 151, substituted by a Department of Expenditure order of 8 May 2026, under which DoE maintains the list of bidders debarred across all procuring entities and the list is displayed on GeM. The grounds and the periods are GFR Rule 151 amended. An authorisation letter or power of attorney for the signatory completes the set.

The certificate an accountant signs. Where a tender carries purchase preference for local suppliers, the order requires, above a value it sets, a certificate “giving the percentage of local content” from the company's statutory or cost auditor, or from a practising cost accountant or chartered accountant where the supplier is not a company. That value, and the classes it places a bidder in, are Class-I, Class-II or non-local.

The file matters because the tender says it does. The model document's instructions to bidders, ITB 1.4.7, say of its qualification section that “Bids/ bidders not meeting these Qualification criteria shall be rejected as nonresponsive.” The Works Manual draws the line from the other side, at para 4.2.6(1): “Any criteria not specified in the tender cannot be used for evaluation or qualification.” The list is the tender's, and it is complete. Terms: bid securing declaration, debarment, local content, pre-qualification.

What you do not need

A tender fee, normally. The Goods Manual, at para 5.2.1: “Normally, no tender document fee should be charged. In exceptional cases, a procuring entity may fix a bare minimum cost of tender documents.”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of FinanceWhere a notice names a fee, the notice governs; where it names none, the schedule is free.

Caution money on GeM. The seller FAQ answers that question in one sentence: “The provision was discontinued in 2025.”

Bid security is not on this list: it is needed unless the tender exempts the bidder or takes a declaration instead, which is the subject of EMD exemptions and the bid securing declaration. Terms: tender fee, EMD.

Keeping the file current

Every item above has a date on it somewhere. The word NIC repeats about the certificate is “valid”: it is issued for a term, and the advice to have it ready “well in advance” is about that expiry as much as about the purchase. The returns GeM asks for are “the last three years”, a window that moves every year. A GST registration, a Udyam registration, a start-up recognition, a bank mandate: each is read again on the day the bid is opened.

GeM's own checklist carries the reminder on its last line, “Last Updated: 30/12/2019”, which is the reason to read any checklist's date before its contents. What the portal does with the file on the day is The tender lifecycle.