India: local-content preference margin in DVC Konar solar-pooling-station tender (INR 113.17 crore)

Mechanism

The legal instrument is the same standing order behind the wider batch of India localisation-preference filings already in the register: the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade's (DPIIT) Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 (as amended), which mandates a bid-evaluation preference margin (ordinarily a 20% purchase-preference margin over a 50% minimum local-content threshold) for "Class-I local supplier" bidders across central-government procurement, including DVC infrastructure contracts. This filing records one instance of that standing order applied to a specific tender: a DVC Request for Proposal (tender ID 2025_DVC_245842_1) for a 132kV solar pooling station and 132kV D/C LILO system at Konar, Jharkhand, supporting a 228 MW floating-solar plus 100 MW/400 MWh BESS project. Trade-press coverage (Mercom India, SolarQuarter) confirms the tender value at INR 113,169,393.72 (~USD 13.6m), a bid-submission deadline of 18 September 2025, and an EMD of INR 1,131,693.90 (1% of contract value). GTA's underlying affected-sector detail and MAST classification sit behind an account-gated view; the tender scope, value, and dates were confirmed from public trade-press coverage of the DVC tender itself.

Severity is set low (2) and severity_basis: quant given the disclosed contract value (~USD 13.6m), consistent with the wider batch of DVC/NHAI/MoRTH localisation-preference filings from the same GTA cadence: this is a routine, standing domestic-preference policy applied within a single infrastructure tender, not a new trade barrier. It shifts bid-evaluation weighting toward Class-I local suppliers without outright excluding foreign bidders.

Downstream implications

• Foreign civil-engineering and engineering-services contractors

bidding into DVC's Konar solar-pooling-station tender face the same structural bid-evaluation disadvantage relative to Class-I local suppliers as the wider batch of NHAI/MoRTH/DVC localisation- preference tenders already in the register.

• Confirms the DPIIT domestic-preference margin extends beyond road

and transport infrastructure into renewable-energy grid-connection procurement, widening the sectoral footprint of India's Atmanirbhar Bharat procurement posture.

Open questions

• Exact local-content percentage threshold applied to the Class-I

designation for this specific tender was not independently confirmed against the full RFP document (account-gated on GTA; not published in trade-press coverage).

• Full RFP reference and evaluation-criteria detail sit on DVC's

e-procurement portal; not independently retrieved.