The portals: where tenders are published and where bids are actually filed

Two systems, not one

The Central Public Procurement Portal (CPPP) at eprocure.gov.in (opens in a new tab) is two things under one name. The ePublishing System is the notice board: it “facilitates all the Central Government Organisations to publish their Tender Enquiries, Corrigenda and Award of Contract details”, and the bids for those notices are taken somewhere else, on paper or on the buyer's own system. The eProcurement System is the whole tender online, from the free download of the tender schedule to the bid, the opening and the award.

NIC's own guidelines draw the line in a pair of sentences: “Under e-Publishing, the User Organisations will continue to invite bids in paper based format”, and “Under e-Procurement, the complete tendering, including the submission of bids by the bidders, will be online.” The same document points at Rule 159 and Rule 160 of GFR 2017: the first on publishing tender information on CPPP, the second on receiving bids electronically. The value line above which e-procurement became mandatory is stated on How procurement works.

Because the notice must reach CPPP whichever system takes the bid, CPPP is the index of central tender notices even when the bid is filed on a PSU's own platform. Glossary: CPPP, e-procurement.

CPPP and the NIC family

The eProcurement half of CPPP runs on NIC's GePNIC software, and the same software runs the state, defence and PSU instances named below. NIC's training portal describes it as “generic in nature”, built to be “adopted for all kinds of procurement activities such as Goods, Services & Works”. NIC's brochure names the stages, from enrolment to Award of Contract; they are the spine of The tender lifecycle.

The tell is the sentence on the home page. CPPP's reads: “The eProcurement System of India enables the Tenderers to download the Tender Schedule free of cost and then submit the bids online through this portal.”National Informatics Centre (NIC), Government of IndiaThe instances named here carry that sentence with their own name in the blank. If a portal carries it, it is GePNIC, and the bidder enrolment, the DSC page and the Bidders Manual Kit are the same set on each.

There is a second central instance. The Government eProcurement System at etenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab) is also GePNIC, and its organisation list includes the National Highways Authority of India, BSNL and AAI.

GeM is a marketplace, not a tender portal

Government e Marketplace (opens in a new tab) (GeM) is the national public procurement portal for common-use goods and services, run by a Section 8 company under the Department of Commerce. Its home page names its modes plainly, “Multiple Procurement Modes - Direct Purchase / Bid / RA”, with an integrated payment system behind them.

Buyers are there because the rule sends them: “The purchases through GeM by Government users have been authorised and made mandatory by Ministry of Finance by adding a new Rule No. 149 in the General Financial Rules, 2017.”GeM SPV (Section 8 company under the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry)Rule 149 works in value slabs: Direct Purchase from any seller in the lowest, L1 purchase from the lowest-priced seller among different manufacturers in the middle, Bid or Reverse Auction above. The rupee lines of those slabs, and the Department of Expenditure's OM of 10 July 2024 that reset them, are stated once on this site, on Selling on GeM. Glossary: GeM, its purchase modes, reverse auction.

Indian Railways: IREPS

Indian Railways does not use GePNIC. The Indian Railways E-Procurement System (opens in a new tab) (IREPS) is its own platform, built by CRIS, carrying e-tenders for goods, services and works across the zonal railways and the production units, plus e-auctions for sales and leasing. Vendor approval lives there too, under UVAM: a vendor applies from its own IREPS account and follows the status online.

The registration guide sets two prerequisites: “Obtain a Digital Signing Certificate (DSC) from any of the Certifying Agencies (CAs) licensed by the Controller of Certifying Agencies, India (CCA)”, and “Install Java (JRE) on your computer.” Then one rule that catches firms registering in a hurry: “PAN number of the entity is mandatory for all Indian entities except Govt. departments.”

Defence: defproc.gov.in

The Ministry of Defence runs its own GePNIC instance, the “eProcurement System for Organisations under MoD” at defproc.gov.in (opens in a new tab), for the revenue and works tenders of defence organisations; it carries the family sentence too.

Capital acquisition is a different world, governed by the Defence Acquisition Procedure, DAP 2020, with dated amendments and a draft DAP 2026 out for comments; the Ministry's index page (opens in a new tab) is where it is read, and this page points no further.

The states on NIC's software

State departments, boards, corporations and municipal bodies tender on their state's portal, and for the states below that portal is a GePNIC instance under NIC. The list is what was confirmed live on 6 September 2026, by name, not a census of India: the states and union territories not named were not checked.

• Odisha: tendersodisha.gov.in (opens in a new tab); works and goods tenders of state departments, boards and municipal bodies.
• Maharashtra: mahatenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Tamil Nadu: tntenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Uttar Pradesh: etender.up.nic.in (opens in a new tab); the host is under nic.in rather than a state domain.
• Rajasthan: eproc.rajasthan.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Madhya Pradesh: mptenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• West Bengal: wbtenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Kerala: etenders.kerala.gov.in (opens in a new tab), branded “eTendering System Government of Kerala”.
• Jharkhand: jharkhandtenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Haryana: etenders.hry.nic.in (opens in a new tab), also under nic.in.
• Punjab: eproc.punjab.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Assam: assamtenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Uttarakhand: uktenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Himachal Pradesh: hptenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).
• Delhi: govtprocurement.delhi.gov.in (opens in a new tab), branded “eTendering System Government of NCT of Delhi”.
• Jammu and Kashmir: jktenders.gov.in (opens in a new tab).

Each of the sixteen takes the same bidder enrolment, the same DSC and the same bid-submission steps as CPPP, which is why Submitting on a NIC portal is written once.

Six states that run their own platforms

Six of the states confirmed for this page do not use GePNIC. Each has its own registration and its own fee rules, and a bidder used to NIC's screens starts again on each.

• Karnataka: the Karnataka Public Procurement Portal (opens in a new tab) (KPPP), run by the Centre for e-Governance. Its programme page says the platform “embeds rule-based workflows aligned with the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurements (KTPP) Act 1999 and Rules 2000”, with NeSL integration for electronic bank guarantees.
• Gujarat: (n)Procure (opens in a new tab), operated by (n)Code Solutions for the state's departments and PSUs. Gujarat Informatics Limited notes that 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”.
• Telangana: the Telangana State eProcurement Portal (opens in a new tab), “being used by all Government Departments, Public Sector Undertakings, Urban Local Bodies and Universities in the State”.
• Andhra Pradesh: the AP E-Procurement Portal (opens in a new tab), one registration for e-tenders, e-auctions, e-catalogues and contract management. Its contractors' FAQ says: “Presently the registration fee is waived off. However it is for a limited period only.”
• Bihar: e-Proc 2.0 (opens in a new tab) at eproc2.bihar.gov.in, with BELTRON as the nodal agency.
• Chhattisgarh: the “CHIPS - e-Tendering System” (opens in a new tab) at eproc.cgstate.gov.in, under CHiPS, the state's nodal IT agency. Its FAQ admits companies, proprietorships, joint ventures, consortia and partnerships as bidders, and asks for both signing and encryption certificates.

The PSUs that tender elsewhere

A central PSU may publish on CPPP and take bids on its own GePNIC instance, on the second NIC instance, on CPPP itself, or on a private platform. The notice still reaches CPPP's ePublishing side, so the search starts there; the bid goes where the NIT says.

• NTPC tenders on a dedicated GePNIC instance, eprocurentpc.nic.in (opens in a new tab); its corporate tenders page publishes NITs and pre-qualification notices and links across to it.
• Coal India and its subsidiaries tender on their own GePNIC instance, coalindiatenders.nic.in (opens in a new tab).
• NHPC publishes its tenders, corrigenda and awards (opens in a new tab) on its own site and takes the bids on CPPP: one of its NITs states that the “Techno-commercial Bid and Price Bid to be submitted on-line at Central Public Procurement e-Portal”.
• NHAI publishes notices on nhai.gov.in (opens in a new tab) and takes bids on NIC's etenders.gov.in instance, where it appears in the organisation list.
• ONGC lists its NITs, EOIs and corrigenda on tenders.ongc.co.in (opens in a new tab), with bids on its SAP-based portal.
• SAIL tenders at sailtenders.co.in (opens in a new tab), “Powered by mjunction”, with project e-tendering on mjPRO.
• BHEL lists tender and corrigendum notifications at bhel.com/tenders (opens in a new tab); the tenders sit on tenders.bhel.com and supplier registration on SUVIDHA.
• GAIL tenders at gailtenders.in (opens in a new tab), classified by purchase, works and consultancy; its SPARSH portal is for digitally signed invoices against an order, after the award rather than the bid.

Each has its own vendor registration, and it sits before the first bid, not after.

What every portal wants before the first bid

Four things come up on every NIC instance, and the first two on every other portal named here.

A Class 3 signing DSC. CPPP's page: “DSC of Class 3 category issued by a licensed Certifying Authority (CA) needs to be obtained for efiling on the eTendering Portal.” The official list of who may issue one is the Controller of Certifying Authorities' list of licensed CAs (opens in a new tab); this page links it and names none. Older wording survives. An NHPC NIT still says “Class II or Class III Certificates with signing key usage”, and the Chhattisgarh FAQ still says “Class – II/Class – III”, but CPPP says Class 3, and that is the wording to plan on. The glossary entry is DSC, Class 3.

Enrolment in advance. e-Procurement “requires the bidders to enrol on the CPP Portal, using a valid Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) and Valid email address”, and “Enrolment on the CPP Portal is free of charge”. Every instance and platform named here has its own enrolment, and none of it is done on the day of the deadline. See bidder enrolment.

The permitted file formats. “Generally, the permitted file format in the portal are pdf / xls / rar/ dwf/ jpg formats.”

The server clock. Deadlines on NIC portals are judged against the server's clock in Indian Standard Time, not the bidder's, and a bid counts only once it is frozen; see freeze bid. The idle logout, the timing of the online fee and EMD payment and the freeze step are on Submitting on a NIC portal; the paperwork before any of it (PAN, GSTIN, Udyam and the registrations a tender asks for) is on Before you can bid.