Passport lamination tender: IHC dismisses plea against American company

Endorses immigration and passports department’s right to accept any offer.

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday dismissed a French firm’s petition challenging the award of a contract for supplying lamination paper for machine readable passports to an American company.

Justice Noorul Haq Qureshi, observed that the immigration and passports department has the right to accept or reject offers of interested parties under the terms and conditions of the tender.

The court also observed that delaying the case will add to people’s hardship as it is directly related to the production of passports.

Reliance, a French firm, had challenged the contract’s award to Security Laminates Opsec, an American company, in April, citing tender violations under Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules.



The case was pending in the IHC since April 6, worsening an already acute shortage of passports.

Initially, the case was heard by Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui who had reserved his judgement but later the bench was changed and the case was reheard by Justice Qureshi after the petitioner’s counsel, Salman Akram Raja, raised an objection.

During the hearing, the court had also expressed displeasure over the conduct of the petitioner’s counsel after he requested for a change of bench.

Former Immigration and Passport director General Zulfiqar Cheema had assured the court of transparency in awarding the contract.

Advocate Raja had contended that his client had received the highest points for quality when its lamination paper was sent to a laboratory after the immigration department and the interior ministry sought bids through an advertisement. But later, the contract was awarded to the US company without informing his client.

He had alleged that Cheema and a project director had manipulated the bidding process to favour the American company, violating PPRA rules.

He had maintained that his client had submitted technical and financial proposals before the project director for machine readable passports after fulfilling all requirements

On May 21, Cheema had alleged that former interior minister Rehman Malik was responsible for the passport backlog as he wanted to give the multibillion-rupee contract to the private firm, Hologram.

The crisis started in December 2012 and since then thousands of applicants have been waiting for their passports, however much of the backlog was cleared by Cheema after swift action with regard to procuring lamination paper.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2013.