KATHMANDU, MAY 25
In a move that has provoked alarm among government watchdogs and procurement experts, the Director General of Department of Passports overrode the recommendations of a government-appointed technical panel, clearing vendors for the financial bidding phase of a 6.4 million e-passport contract despite what officials say were clear technical failures.
The decision, made by Director General Tirtha Raj Aryal, appears to contravene the country's Public Procurement Act, which stipulates that only technically compliant bidders may proceed to the financial round under the goods procurement method employed in the bid.
Internal evaluation documents reviewed by The Himalayan Times show that at least two major vendors-Muehlbauer ID Services GmbH and Poland-based PWPW-failed to meet dozens of critical technical criteria. In Package 1 of the tender, which includes systems for pre-enrollment, data management, and biometric processing, Muehlbauer did not meet any of the 238 required technical specifications, according to the official compliance sheet signed by members of the technical sub-committee.
In Package 2, covering passport booklet personalization, quality control, and delivery systems, Muehlbauer failed to comply with 50 of 297 listed technical requirements. PWPW failed 49. Despite these findings, both firms were advanced to the next round of bidding.
The technical sub-committee, composed of 12 IT professionals from Nepal Police, the Department of Information Technology, and the Ministry of Home Affairs, spent nearly two months reviewing the bids. Their report included detailed compliance sheets, clarification notes from vendors, and a recommendation to seek further opinion from the Public Procurement Monitoring Office regarding one vendor, the French technology firm IDEMIA.
That recommendation was never acted upon. Instead, on May 13, the Department announced that financial proposals from Muehlbauer, IDEMIA, Veridos, and PWPW would be opened on May 28.
"This is not just a procedural lapse-it's a complete subversion of the technical safeguards put in place to ensure integrity and transparency in major public procurements," said a senior procurement officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.
One committee member, a government computer engineer named Samesh Thapa, was allegedly pressured into retracting his signature from the final technical report-a move considered tantamount to official document tampering under Nepali law. Six other evaluators declined to sign the final report but had earlier certified individual compliance sheets marking bids as responsive or not, leaving behind a trail of conflicting documentation.
IDEMIA's continued role in Nepal's passport system has been the subject of scrutiny. The company was awarded a contract in 2020 to supply 2 million e-passports, but later delivered 3.1 million following a controversial variation order. Despite the expansion, no adjustment was made to the initial $2.45 million paid for infrastructure and technology-an omission flagged by the Office of the Auditor General in its 2024 report as a significant financial irregularity.
The full contract eventually amounted to nearly $24.5 million, a figure critics say was inflated and poorly justified.
Under Nepal's procurement rules, technical proposals must demonstrate full compliance and be backed by evidence showing how each requirement will be met. Clarifications are permitted, but no changes or additions to the original proposal are allowed.
"The very purpose of having a technical evaluation process is to prevent exactly this kind of discretionary override," said a Kathmandu-based public procurement analyst. "If technical disqualifications are ignored, we might as well not have the process at all."
Calls for accountability are growing. Civil society groups, former bureaucrats, and transparency advocates are urging the government to rectify the bullish mistake of the non technical committee head by the DG and calls are also growing to initiate an independent investigation. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Nepal's top anti-corruption body, has not yet commented on the matter.
As Nepal continues to modernize its identity and document infrastructure, the unfolding events raise pressing questions about oversight, governance, and the true cost of digital transformation for a developing country's citizens. THT could not contact DG, Department of Passport as his phone was switched off.
