GFR Rule 151 amended, 8 May 2026: new grounds for debarment from bidding

What Rule 151 is, and what it said before

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

The Department of Expenditure substituted Rule 151 of the General Financial Rules, “Debarment from bidding”, by office memorandum F.No.2/6/2026-PPD(i) of 8 May 2026. Debarment keeps a firm out of a procurement whatever its price, so a change to the grounds is a change to who may bid.

The compilation updated to 31 January 2026 carried a narrow version: a bidder “shall be debarred” on conviction under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, or, in a public procurement contract, under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita or any other law “for causing any loss of life or property or causing a threat to public health”. The bar ran for “a period not exceeding three years” and the list sat on the Central Public Procurement Portal. Where the rule sits among the documents a bidder works under is on the rules.

The grounds the amendment adds

Two things are new, and only one involves a court. Rule 151(i)(a) now makes a bidder “liable to be debarred” on conviction under “the Code on Wages, 2019 or the Code on Social Security, 2020 or the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 or the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020”, beside the two grounds already there.

The second addition reaches a firm convicted of nothing. Under the new Rule 151(i)(b) a bidder is liable to be debarred where he “has been debarred on more than one occasion by one or more procuring entities” for “failure to pay wages to employees engaged under the contracts” or “failure to remit statutory contributions towards social security... and, the procuring entity or entities has been required to make payment of such wages or contributions due to default by the bidder”. The trigger is repetition plus a buyer that had to pay what the contractor did not. It does not spread on its own: the proviso says such debarment, “insofar as it relates to debarment across all procuring entities, shall take effect upon a decision by the Department of Expenditure (DoE)”.

The period, and where the list is displayed

Rule 151(ii) keeps the outer limit: a debarred bidder “or any successor of the bidder” is not eligible to take part in any procuring entity's procurement “for a period not exceeding three years commencing from the date of such debarment”. What moved is the noticeboard: “DoE shall maintain a list of such debarred bidders which shall also be displayed on GeM”, where the earlier text named the Central Public Procurement Portal.

What a single ministry may do on its own

Rule 151(iii) lets one procuring entity bar a firm from its own procurement “for a period not exceeding two years” where it determines that the bidder “has breached the code of integrity” or, for employees engaged under the contract, “failed to pay wages” or to remit social-security contributions. The wages ground is new here too.

The list does not stay in the ministry. It “will also be displayed on their website”, and the ministry “shall report all such cases of debarment to GeM. GeM shall maintain a consolidated database of such debarred firms”. A bar imposed by one buyer is visible to the rest. The separate suspension under a bid securing declaration is on EMD exemptions.

Due process is untouched: no bar “unless such bidder has been given a reasonable opportunity to represent against such debarment”.

The companion memorandum of the same date

A second memorandum of the same date, F.No.2/6/2026-PPD(ii), amended the debarment guidelines of 2 November 2021. Its para 5(b) adds the wages and social-security default beside the code-of-integrity breach under Rule 175; its para 5(h) puts each ministry's list on its website and reports every case to GeM.

Para 11 sets the route to an all-ministry bar: GeM refers repeat cases, the Ministry of Labour and Employment verifies whether the conditions of Rule 151(i)(b) “are satisfied and whether due process has been followed”, and where it is not satisfied the single ministry's bar stands while the wider one does not. A decision to bar a firm everywhere takes the form of “a speaking order”, published “on GeM portal”.

The manuals follow the rule: their provisions “shall be deemed to be amended accordingly”, and the first memorandum names the paragraphs reached: para 3.7.1 of the Goods manual, para 3.8.1 of each services manual and para 8.7.1 of the Works manual.

What this changes in a bidder's own file

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

A tender that asks for a declaration that the bidder is not debarred now asks about a wider rule, and the declaration in a bidder's file was drafted against the older one. One consequence follows from the text: a firm supplying labour (security, housekeeping, transport, facility management, works) meets its wage and social-security record as a bidding question as well as a labour-law one, because the default the rule describes is a buyer having had to pay what the contractor did not.

Whether any of it reaches a particular firm is a question for that firm's adviser. The documents a bidder keeps ready are on before you can bid; the word itself is in the glossary.