The Bombay High Court has rejected a challenge from a Dubai-based company, Seclink Technologies Corp, against the Maharashtra government’s decision to give the big Dharavi redevelopment project to the Adani Group. This project, which aims to improve one of Mumbai’s most crowded areas, is known as Asia’s largest urban renewal effort.
The court’s judges, Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar, explained that their role isn’t to second-guess the decisions made by the authorities about who should get the project. They stated that the government, which issued the bids, knows what it needs best, so the court should interfere only a little bit.
Seclink Technologies argued that their original bid was higher than the one made by the Adani Group. They claimed they deserved the contract because they were the “rightful highest bidder” from a tender process that began in 2018. However, in November 2022, Adani Properties, part of the Adani Group led by Gautam Adani, won the bidding.
In this partnership, Adani Group has 80% ownership in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project Pvt Ltd, while the Maharashtra government holds the remaining 20%. Most of the redevelopment will happen on 296 acres, excluding areas like parks and fishing villages.
Dharavi has over 850,000 residents, and with the temporary population included, that number goes over 1 million. It has an extremely high density of people, making it the most crowded zone in Mumbai, which is itself the sixth most crowded city in the world.
Seclink also accused the government of making the new tender in October 2022 in a way that purposely kept them out. However, the state’s lawyer, Milind Sathe, explained that things changed because railway land was added to the project, which adjusted the business plan enough to cancel the previous tender.
Sathe pointed out that Seclink was just one out of eight groups that bid before. He noted that Seclink cannot challenge the tender alone without the other members of its group joining in. If they had concerns about the new bid conditions, they should have raised them earlier. Thus, the High Court dismissed their petition.
The project is located close to the Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai’s main financial area, which houses important banks, stock exchanges, and corporate offices.
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