The Supreme Court on Friday asked billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate to respond to allegations of unfairly winning a bid to redevelop one of Asia’s largest slums in Mumbai, with the competing Dubai-based consortium offering to raise its bid.
The long-running legal battle focuses on whether SecLink Technologies was incorrectly excluded from the bidding process when the Indian billionaire won the Dharavi slum project with a $619 million bid in 2023.
A Mumbai court disagreed with SecLink’s position last year, landing the dispute at India’s highest court. Adani and the government of Maharashtra, where the slum is located, have denied wrongdoing.
While the Supreme Court declined SecLink’s request to immediately put the Dharavi project on hold, it asked Adani Properties and the local authority to respond to the consortium’s challenge.
“The contract awarded is obviously subject to the outcome of this case,” the court said.
Adani wants to transform the slum into a modern city after years of delays and a ruling in the case could formally settle its future.
SecLink’s lawyer C. Aryama Sundaram told the Supreme Court it was willing to increase its original bid by 20 per cent, but the judges asked for a written submission.
Adani group lawyer Mukul Rohatgi said construction work had already started and 2,000 people were already employed.
A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar asked the Adani group to maintain a separate escrow account for channelling all project related payments through one single account, until the top court decided the dispute between the two real estate giants over the redevelopment project of Asia’s biggest slum spread over 258 hectares.
CJI Khanna indicated that the court was essentially concerned with the issue of alleged tweaking of the bid conditions by the Maharashtra government allegedly to favour the Adanis and dislodge other bidders.
The 240 hectare (594 acre) slum, featured in Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning 2008 movie “Slumdog Millionaire”, is situated next to Mumbai airport. Adani launched the project last March with a survey to determine the eligibility of slum residents to be given a free home. It expects the redevelopment to take a further seven years.
