The rules: which document decides what, from GFR 2017 to the preference orders

The order of authority

No single document decides a government bid. A stack of them does, in this order.

The law and the General Financial Rules. There is no procurement statute; the Goods Manual says so in its first chapter, quoted on How procurement works. GFR 2017 is the Ministry of Finance's rulebook, and every central ministry, department and autonomous body buys under it.

The Department of Expenditure's office memoranda. The GFR is amended by OM, and each OM becomes a footnote in the next compilation. An OM can also reach into a manual: the debarment guidelines of 8 May 2026 say the manuals are “deemed to be amended accordingly and in case of any inconsistency, these amendments shall prevail.”

The four manuals. Guidance, not rules. The consultancy manual's preface fixes the order: “In case of inconsistencies between this Manual and prevailing law or GFR, the extant law and GFR shall prevail”, and the non-consultancy manual carries the same sentence.

The two preference orders. The MSE order is made under the MSMED Act, 2006; the Make in India order is DPIIT's, circulated to every ministry by a DoE memorandum. Each is read with the GFR, and each has its own amendment chain.

The tender document. Under all of it sits the document the buyer issued for this bid: it says which of the above applies and how. The Works Manual is blunt: “Any criteria not specified in the tender cannot be used for evaluation or qualification.”

GFR 2017 and how to read a compilation

The Department of Expenditure does not publish the GFR as a base text plus a list of amendments; it republishes the whole rulebook with every amendment folded in, titled “updated up to” a date. The current copy is updated up to 31 January 2026, and every amendment is a footnote under the rule it changed, carrying the OM number and its date; the one under Rule 149 names the memorandum “dated 10.07.2024”.

The rules a bidder meets, in order:

Two copies are online (the current one and the one before it, updated up to 31 July 2024), and reading them side by side shows which footnotes are new. Six changed something for a bidder: Rule 149's GeM purchase slabs, by the OM of 10 July 2024; insurance surety bonds, by the OM of 2 February 2022; electronic bank guarantees, by the OM of 5 August 2022; Rule 170(iii)'s bid-securing declaration as an alternative to bid security; Rule 171(i) on performance security, by the OM of 1 January 2024; and Rule 159, which now names “the GeM-Central Public Procurement Portal (GeM-CPPP)”.

The first amendment the compilation does not yet carry is Rule 151, substituted by the OM of 8 May 2026; until the next prints, the rule is read from the OM itself, and the update sets it out.

Rule 206 draws the boundary: anything not covered in Rule 198 to Rule 205 sends the buyer to “Rule 142 to Rule 176 pertaining to procurement of goods and not to the procurement of consulting services”, so goods run to Rule 176, non-consulting from Rule 198, and consultancy between them.

The four manuals

The manuals are the Department's guidance on applying the GFR, with the bidder-facing detail the rules state in a line each; its manuals page lists the current editions.

• Goods, Second Edition, 2024. It follows the 2017 goods manual, updated in 2022.
• Works, Second Edition, 2025. It follows the 2019 first edition, updated in 2022; an OM of 18 June 2026 corrected two cross-references and changed nothing else.
• Consultancy Services, Second Edition, 2025. It replaces the 2017 manual and names the four selection methods a consultant meets, quoted on How procurement works.
• Non-Consultancy Services, 2025. A first edition: outsourced services (security, housekeeping, transport, operation and maintenance) were a chapter of the consultancy manual and now have one of their own.

The publication dates and figures are on Three DoE manuals, 2025, the consultancy weightings on How the winner is chosen; what the manuals say about debarment was amended with Rule 151 on 8 May 2026.

The MSE order

The Public Procurement Policy for Micro and Small Enterprises Order, 2012 was notified as S.O. 581(E) on 23 March 2012 under the MSMED Act, applied from 1 April 2012 and became mandatory on 1 April 2015. Its amendments: S.O. 5670(E) of 9 November 2018, raising the mandatory share of annual procurement from MSEs and adding a special provision for MSEs owned by women; S.O. 3237(E) of 11 August 2021, pointing vendor-development programmes at “procurement through GeM Portal”; and S.O. 5745(E) of 8 December 2022, letting the Review Committee grant exemption “on a case to case basis” from procuring certain reserved items through open tendering.

Ministries and CPSEs report their procurement from MSEs on the MSME Sambandh portal; the Ministry's own FAQ is the plain-language statement of the order. What it gives a bidder and what it does not is on What the MSE policy gives and does not, the reported shares are on the data note.

The Make in India order

The Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 is DPIIT's: Order No. P-45021/2/2017-B.E.-II of 15 June 2017, circulated to all ministries by the Department of Expenditure under OM F.18/3/2017-PPD of 4 July 2017. Its revisions:

• 28 May 2018, and again on 29 May 2019. The first added the definitions of local content and margin of purchase preference, and the value above which an auditor's certificate is required.
• 4 June 2020. Created the three classes a bidder now declares in every NIT (Class-I local supplier, Class-II local supplier and non-local supplier) and the purchase-preference mechanics with them.
• 16 September 2020. An amendment “enabling nodal Ministries/ Departments to notify higher minimum local content requirement for Class-I & Class-II local suppliers”, with reciprocity against countries that shut Indian firms out of their own procurement; its line on foreign certifications and brands is quoted on How to read a Notice Inviting Tender.

A further revision dated 19 July 2024 is cited by the 2025 manuals and has not yet been read; this page names it and says nothing about its content until it has. The classes, the margin, the certificate threshold and the global-tender-enquiry rule are on Class-I, Class-II or non-local.

CVC's role today

The Central Vigilance Commission does not make procurement rules; it hosts them. Its site carries a “Public Procurement Manuals” page mirroring the Department of Expenditure's manuals, and its own circulars on post-tender negotiation, of 2005 and 2007, are history: the addresses at which they stood now return the Commission's home page.

The operative rule is in the GFR and the Goods Manual. Rule 173(xiv): “Negotiation with bidders after bid opening must be severely discouraged.” Goods Manual para 7.6.9(1) allows it only “with the lowest acceptable bidder (L1), who is techno-commercially responsive”. How that plays out is on How the winner is chosen; the term is in the glossary.

The states

The GFR binds central buyers. A state department buys under its own rules, and the tender document says which. Karnataka is the confirmed example of a state with a procurement statute: its platform “embeds rule-based workflows aligned with the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurements (KTPP) Act 1999 and Rules 2000”. No other state act is named here until its text has been read at a live address.

The state and territory instances on NIC's e-procurement system are named on The portals; a notice on any of them is issued under that state's own rules.

Defence and Railways

Defence has its own procedure. The Ministry of Defence's index lists the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, its amendments and a “Draft Defence Acquisition Procedure - 2026” put out for comment; capital acquisition runs under the DAP. Revenue procurement by defence organisations runs under the Defence Procurement Manual 2009; neither is summarised here. Indian Railways buys through its own system, IREPS, rather than NIC's, described on The portals.

What a bidder can do with all this

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

The rules give a bidder a few formal openings before the deadline. Rule 173(x) provides for “one or more rounds of pre-bid conference” in turnkey contracts, contracts of a special nature, “or wherever felt necessary”; a change the buyer makes after publication is issued as a corrigendum, published in the same manner as the tender and read as part of it. Both are on How a tender changes after it is published; the CPPP home page links the debarment lists and the rules beside the tender search.

A government buyer also deducts tax at source under two Acts before paying a bill; the rates and thresholds are your adviser's question. The four sums a bid ties up are on Money in a bid.

How to read a change

A change arrives in one of three forms, and each names itself.

• An OM from the Department of Expenditure, with a file number and a date, substituting text in the GFR or amending a manual paragraph. The four of 2026: the Rule 151 substitution and the companion debarment guidelines, both of 8 May 2026; the Works Manual correction of 18 June 2026; and the memorandum of 13 July 2026 encouraging ministries to adopt the “Producer Price Index (PPI) in place of Wholesale Price Index (WPI)” in future price escalation clauses.
• A footnote in the next compilation: the same OM in its permanent place.
• A Gazette notification or an order PDF for the preference orders: the MSE order's amendments are S.O. numbers published by the Development Commissioner (MSME), the Make in India order's revisions numbered orders published by DPIIT.

Where each is published: the Department of Expenditure's circulars and manuals pages; DPIIT's order PDFs; DC-MSME's notification PDFs. The reading order at the top of this page is also the order in which to read a change: an OM prevails over the manual it amends, and the law and the GFR over both.