India: local-content preference margin in NHAI Uttar Pradesh NH-27 blackspot-rectification tender (INR 107.87 crore)

Mechanism

The legal instrument is the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade's (DPIIT) Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order, 2017 (as amended, Order No. P-45021/2/2017-B.E.-II), 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 NHAI infrastructure contracts. This filing records one instance of that standing order applied to a specific tender: an NHAI Request for Proposal issued by the Lucknow Project Implementation Unit (ref. NHAI/PIU-LKO/NH-27/Blackspot/2026) for rectification of an accident blackspot on NH-27 in Uttar Pradesh, valued by GTA at INR 107.87 crore, targeting firm-specific preferences in civil-engineering, general-construction, and engineering-services categories. GTA's underlying description, affected-sector detail, and affected- trading-partner list sit behind an account-gated view; the tender reference and value were confirmed from the public state-act summary page. No independent official NHAI e-procurement or gazette link was found for this specific tender within the search budget — the primary source cited here is the standing DPIIT order that governs every instance of this recurring class of action, consistent with the sourcing approach used for the companion NHAI/NHIDCL/state-PWD filings in this register (see 2026-01-16-india-nhai-uttar-pradesh-road-inr194cr-localisation-preference.md for the same pattern).

Severity is set low (2) and severity_basis: quant reflects the disclosed tender value (INR 107.87 crore, ≈ USD 13m) rather than an undisclosed-scale judgment call: this is a routine, single-tender application of a standing nationwide order, not a new policy instrument. It is one of dozens of near-identical NHAI/state-PWD tender filings tracked in this register's EM logistics trade-facilitation theme, reflecting the sheer volume of Indian infrastructure procurement subject to the Make in India preference order rather than any single high-impact action.

Downstream implications

• Adds to the accumulating body-of-evidence count of India's

standing Make in India procurement preference being applied tender-by-tender across road, rail, metro, and power-sector infrastructure — the aggregate effect (not any single tender) is the relevant industrial-policy signal.

• Foreign or foreign-linked civil-engineering/construction

contractors bidding on NHAI road-rectification work in Uttar Pradesh face a structural bid-evaluation disadvantage versus Class-I local suppliers on this and equivalent tenders.

Open questions

• No independent NHAI e-procurement portal link was locatable for

NHAI/PIU-LKO/NH-27/Blackspot/2026 within the search budget; revisit if NHAI's public tender portal becomes crawlable.

• Standard caveat for this recurring class of action: individual

tender-level filings are not being re-verified against the underlying DPIIT order text each time — flag if the order itself is amended.