Pre-bid meeting in a tender, and whether to attend
Pre-bid meeting (Pre-bid conference). A meeting the buyer holds after publishing a tender and before bids close, to clear doubts about specifications and commercial terms. Attendance is optional, but a bidder who skips it or sends no written query is taken to have no objection.
Checked against its sources on 3 October 2026.
What it is and when it is held
GFR 2017 Rule 173(x) says that for turnkey contracts, contracts of a special nature for sophisticated and costly equipment, or wherever felt necessary, the bidding document should provide for one or more pre-bid conferences. Their purpose is to clear doubts about the specifications and allied technical details. The date, time and place go in the bidding document, sufficiently ahead of bid opening. The rule is aimed at complex purchases, so the buyer decides whether a given tender needs one.
The Manual for Procurement of Goods (second edition, 2024), para 5.2.3, adds that the meeting should normally be held 15 to 21 days after the tender document is issued, and may be held online. The buyer may restrict attendance to bidders who have downloaded the tender document. Written queries must reach the buyer by the date in the tender document, or 7 days before the meeting if the document does not say. Delegates must bring photo identity and an authorisation letter from their company, otherwise they are not allowed to participate.
What it decides for a bidder
Attendance is not mandatory. But the Manual states that if a bidder chooses not to participate, or does not submit a written query, it is assumed to have no issues with the techno-commercial conditions. A later objection to those conditions has to get past that assumption.
After the meeting, the minutes are published on the buyer's portal within seven days. Where the buyer changes the tender as a result, it issues a clarification letter and a corrigendum, and those amendments form part of the tender document (paras 5.2.3(e) and 5.1.5). The buyer may extend the bid deadline so bidders have time to take the changes into account (para 5.1.6). The Manual for Procurement of Works (second edition, 2025), para 4.7, sets the same procedure for works.
The mistake people make
Treating what was said in the room as the tender. Where the buyer amends a tender, it does so by corrigendum, so read the corrigendum and the minutes before you price, and check whether the bid deadline moved.
The other common mistake is missing the query cut-off. It falls before the meeting, not at it. Separately, para 5.2.4 lets any bidder seek a clarification in writing before the clarification end date in the tender, or 7 days before the bid deadline if none is stated, and the buyer should reply at least 5 days before bids open.
Where ScanX reads this for you
ScanX reads India's central, defence and PSU procurement portals every hour and matches each notice to your firm's rules, so a tender with a pre-bid meeting reaches you like any other notice. The pre-bid date is not among the fields ScanX reads from a GeM bid document, so check the bid document and any corrigendum for it.