Tamil Nadu Assembly election 2026: Madras High Court defers orders in cases challenging tender conditions for live webcasting

The Madras High Court, on Tuesday (March 17, 2026), deferred orders on writ petitions filed by two private surveillance service companies, one based in Delhi and another in Chennai, challenging the tender conditions imposed by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) for installing 1.5 lakh cameras in 75,000 polling stations and 3,744 cameras in the counting centres for live webcasting during the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections 2026.

First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G. Arul Murugan said, it would endeavour to pass orders by Tuesday itself since the technical and financial bids had to be submitted by 3 p.m. and the technical bids were scheduled to be opened by 3:30 pm on Tuesday. The judges deferred orders after the submission of a written note by Election Commission of India (ECI) counsel Niranjan Rajagopal.

The Bench also heard elaborate arguments advanced by senior counsel Siddharth Mridul (former Chief Justice of Manipur High Court) and V. Raghavachari for Chennai based I-Net Secure Labs Private Limited and senior counsel Satish Parasaran for Delhi based Innovatiview India Limited which had challenged different tender conditions because of which the two companies got excluded from the zone of consideration.

Mr. Mridul told the court the tender notification issued on March 3 states that joint ventures would not be allowed to participate in the tender process and even in case of a consortium, the prime bidder experience alone would be taken into consideration and that the bidder must have an annual turnover of ₹100 crore and above in the last three audited financial years (2022-23, 2023-34 and 2024-25).

Highlighting the estimated project value of the tender was approximately ₹120 crore, the senior counsel said, as per established public procurement principles and Central Vigilance Commission guidelines, the turnover requirements in public tenders should generally not exceed 30 to 40% of the estimated project value unless it was extremely necessary due to the unique nature of the procurement.

He said, such onerous tender conditions had been introduced in Tamil Nadu for the first time and they were completely at variance with the tender conditions imposed in Kerala and West Bengal. He said, in West Bengal where 1.8 lakh cameras were required at polling stations, the tender requirement was only a cumulative turnover of ₹150 crores over three years since the tender value was about ₹150 crore.

Further, contending the two onerous tender conditions would exclude a majority of the intending bidders from the zone of consideration and permit only a couple of companies to participate in the tender process, the senior counsel said: “Such restrictive eligibility criteria create a strong apprehension that the tender conditions have been tailored to suit the said two companies alone.”

One of the firm’s arguments

On his part, Mr. Parasaran challenged the tender condition which required the bidders to demonstrate prior experience of executing live web streaming from not less than one lakh polling station cameras along with installation of at least 2,500 closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the counting centres, apart from executing three similar election surveillance projects.

He said, while prior experience in executing live web streaming from polling stations was reasonable, the additional requirement that bidders must have also installed 2,500 cameras in the counting centres was unnecessary and irrational. He said, “the manifestly arbitrary and disproportionate” condition operates as an artificial barrier that excludes the otherwise technically competent bidders.

He also said, such tender conditions were absent in the notifications issued in other States. However, Mr. Rajagopal claimed the tender conditions were invited by the respective State authorities depending upon the local needs and requirements and hence there were variations in them. He added a higher turnover had been insisted during this election because the number of cameras required now were more.