By Dhwani Pandya and Arpan Chaturvedi
MUMBAI (Reuters) – An Indian court on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the award of a contract to Adani Group to revamp one of Asia’s largest slums in Mumbai, clearing one of the main legal challenges to the ambitious project.
The group led by billionaire Gautam Adani won a $619 million bid in 2023 to convert the Dharavi slum into a modern city hub, but Dubai-based SecLink Technologies Corporation, winner of a previous tender for the slum revamp, challenged the award of the contract to Adani in a petition in the Bombay High Court in July 2023.
The 240 hectare (594 acre) slum, known as Asia’s densest and featured in Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning 2008 movie “Slumdog Millionaire”, stands in contrast to India’s development boom with its open sewers and shared toilets, close to Mumbai’s international airport and business district.
“The grounds urged in support of the petition lack force and accordingly, the challenge … fails,” the Bombay High Court concluded in the order.
SecLink will appeal against the ruling in the Supreme Court, Suraj Iyer, a lawyer from Ganesh and Co. representing SecLink, told Reuters.
SecLink had alleged in its petition that Maharashtra state improperly cancelled an original 2018 tender for the Dharavi redevelopment, for which SecLink had bid highest, and restarted the process with new terms in 2022 so that Adani could win.
SecLink had also received a Mumbai court’s permission to add Adani Group to its lawsuit last year in an ongoing petition against the Maharashtra government.
In an 809-page filing last year, the eight-member consortium had said that Maharashtra’s modified bidding process was “politically motivated” and “tailor made to suit” Adani Group.
But Friday’s court order, referring to the second tender for the slum revamp that Adani won, ruled: “It cannot be said that the tender conditions were tailor-made so as to suit only a particular bidder.”
The Maharashtra government, led by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies, and the Adani Group had denied all allegations in their response to the petition.
The Maharashtra government had said that its officials had followed the proper process in cancelling the earlier tender and Adani Group had argued that the case should be thrown out in the interest of development.
The Adani group is executing the Dharavi slum revamp via a joint venture with the Dharavi Slum Redevelopment Authority. It launched the project in March with a survey to determine the eligibility of slum residents for getting a free home.
(Reporting by Dhwani Pandya and Arpan Chaturvedi, Editing by William Maclean)
