The Bombay High Court on Friday set aside a petition filed by United Arab Emirates-based firm Seclink Technologies challenging a decision by the Maharashtra government to cancel its 2019 bid for the Dharavi slum redevelopment project and issue a fresh tender in 2022, Bar and Bench reported.

The tender to redevelop the Dharavi slum cluster in Mumbai was subsequently granted to Adani Properties. The project entails rehabilitating 6.5 lakh slum residents currently living in an area of 2.5 sq km.

Adani Properties is part of the industrialist Gautam Adani-led Adani Group.

On Friday, a bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar set aside the petition filed by Seclink Technologies, saying that the grounds in their argument lacked merit, The Indian Express reported.

In November 2018, the first tender to redevelop Dharavi was issued and bids were opened in March 2019. Seclink Technologies had won the tender with a Rs 7,200-crore bid.

However, the tender was cancelled in October 2020 during the tenure of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, which said that it had acquired an additional 45-acre plot from the railway ministry for the project.

The costs of acquiring the land and rehabilitating those who lived on it had not been factored into the tender, which is why it had to be cancelled, the state government had said.

Following this, a fresh bidding process was launched in 2022.

In November 2022, the Adani Group won the tender with a bid of Rs 5,059 crore. This was more than twice the amount of Rs 2,025 crore quoted by its competitor DLF Group. Another company had been disqualified on technical grounds.

On July 13, 2023, a resolution issued by the state housing department awarded the project to the Adani Group, which became the lead partner. A work order was issued four days later.

Seclink Technologies challenged this order in the court, according to The Indian Express.

During the proceedings in court, Seclink Technologies, represented by Senior Advocate Virendra Tulzapurkar, said that it had won the bid for the project in 2019 but was not awarded the tender due to the inclusion of railway land.

Tulzapurkar claimed that there was no material difference between the previous and current tenders as the railway land had been included in both. It further alleged that the state government had awarded the project to the Adani Group “at a loss to the public exchequer”.

However, Senior Advocate Milind Sathe, representing the Maharashtra government and the Slum Rehabilitation Authority, said that the state government – led by Eknath Shinde at the time – had issued the new tender in 2022 after finding a 45-acre plot to replace the railway land, with the Adani group qualifying for the bid.

The tender awarded to the Adani Group was “absolutely transparent”, the state government argued, adding that no undue favour was given to the highest bidder.

It also said that the new tender took into account the rehabilitation and rehousing of around seven lakh non-eligible persons, making the redevelopment process more “inclusive”. Under the old tender, non-eligible slum dwellers were not entitled to rehabilitation and would have had to rely on Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for assistance, it added.

The state government also said that the new tender required the bidder to make a minimum payment of Rs 2,800 crore to the Railway Land Development Authority, as the railway-owned land was included in the redevelopment project.

It also claimed that Seclink Technologies had said that the conditions for the new tender did not suit it. However, instead of offering suggestions, it chose not to participate and made “vague allegations”, Sathe added.

The Dharavi slum redevelopment project is being carried out through a special purpose vehicle, in which the Adani Group holds an 80% stake and the state government holds the remaining 20%.

Along with the rehabilitation of slum residents, it involves redeveloping buildings and informal tenements as well as developing infrastructure such as water supply and sewage in Dharavi, considered to be among the world’s largest slums.

Also read: Why Adani’s Dharavi project was a talking point in Maharashtra polls