India’s highest court has agreed to urgently hear, on 20 July 2026, the Union Government’s appeal against a Delhi High Court judgment that annulled the tender process for outsourcing Consular, Passport and Visa (CPV) services at four key Indian missions—Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Singapore and Canberra. The High Court had, on 15 July, ruled that the evaluation of bids lacked transparency and fairness, directing the government to issue a fresh Request for Proposals within one month. Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta told the bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant that the suspension of the contracts has left Indian missions unable to process thousands of daily passport renewals, visa endorsements and Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) applications. According to the Ministry of External Affairs, the four posts together handled more than 1.3 million consular transactions last year, many of them urgent travel‐related applications by Indian expatriates and foreign business travellers. Indian companies that send personnel on rotation to the United Arab Emirates and Australia are reporting project delays because employees cannot obtain the required multiple-entry business visas. Global process outsourcer Infosys and engineering giant Larsen & Toubro both confirmed to Business Standard that staff movements have slowed since VFS Global suspended new appointments in Australia on 1 July. If the Supreme Court grants a stay on the High Court order, the existing vendors could be allowed to keep operating until the new tender is completed, averting a full-scale shutdown. If not, corporates may need to reroute applications through missions in third countries or fly employees to India for in-country processing—both costly options. The case has therefore become a critical test of how India balances procurement probity with the continuity of global mobility services for its 35-million-strong diaspora and its foreign investment partners.
Source: Business Standard
