Bombay high court dismisses petition against award of Dharavi project to Adani | Mumbai News – Times of India

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday found no force in a petition filed by Seychelles-incorporated Seclink Technologies Corporation challenging the state govt decision to award the over Rs 5,000 crore Dharavi redevelopment project to Adani Properties Pvt Ltd.
The project is to redevelop 259 hectares of Dharavi, the largest slum in the country. The land sprawl available for development is bigger than Central Park in New York.
Dismissing the petition, a division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar held that the bid awarded to Adani in its 2022 offer during a fresh bidding process was valid. Seclink was the lead member of a consortium that emerged as the highest bidder in the first, 2018 process.
The high court found no merit in Seclink’s submissions made through senior counsel Virendra Tulzapurkar that conditions of the fresh tender were embodied only to oust the petitioner from participation and to suit a particular tenderer. The high court held that the submission, “in our opinion, is misconceived, to which we are unable to agree”.
The high court agreed with senior counsel Milind Sathe’s submission that the 2019 letter was not a concluded contract with Seclink.
The high court held that merely on a declaration of it being the highest bidder, “no right can be said to have vested in the petitioner; neither would it amount to a concluded contract”.
The high court said it was open to Seclink to raise its grievance against conditions in fresh bids before the opening of the financial bids. But not having done so and to raise the challenge subsequently, the high court held that “it will not be permissible”.
In 2018, the state issued its tender first and Seclink, said law firm Ganesh & Co, emerged as the highest bidder, with an offer of Rs 7,200 crore. The state cancelled the 2018 bid and called for fresh tenders with additional conditions in 2022. Senior counsel Virendra Tulzapurkar for Seclink assailed the validity of the state decision to cancel the 2018 bids and invite fresh bids in 2022 and also the letter of allotment (LoA) of July 2023 to the Adani group.
He argued that the state took its decision for “extraneous reasons”, unreasonable for its delay, was thus arbitrary and irrational, violating the fundamental right to equality. He contended that a March 8, 2019, letter by the Dharavi redevelopment project to Seclink informing it was the highest bidder amounted to a “concluded contract”, hence the bids could not be cancelled.
Seclink challenged the cancellation of the 2018 bidding process in which it participated, contended senior counsel Ravi Kadam and Wadia Ghandy & Co, who represented Adani Properties Pvt Ltd, and did not participate in the second bid of 2022.
-For the state, senior counsel Milind Sathe argued that Dharavi is a first-of-a kind human upliftment project which, having failed to take off in the past three decades, was finally awarded to the Adani Group in a transparent bidding process. Sathe, the judgment said, “vehemently refuted the submissions made by Tulzapurkar and has submitted that on account of the inclusion of railway land in the subject project, the ‘business model’ got altered and as such for this reason alone the decision to cancel the earlier tender process cannot be faulted with; rather it is justified and is in the interest of the tendering authority as also in public interest”.
The high court judgment authored by the Chief Justice pointed out how in legal jurisprudence “court’s interference should be minimal” as it doesn’t sit in appeal over state authority in tender matters. The Supreme Court has laid down that state authority floating the tender is the best judge of its requirements.
The state cited several factors like the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, which affected the financial and economic state of affairs, for the fresh bidding process.
The high court in its judgment said, “A perusal of the said letter would reveal that the DRP/SPA had only informed the petitioner that the consortium of the petitioner had bid the highest amount for the project. In our opinion, the letter is only a communication that the bid of the consortium of the petitioner was the highest and it will not amount to acceptance. It nowhere states that the petitioner was declared to be the successful bidder and accordingly, on the basis of the said letter, it cannot be said that any concluded contract between the petitioner and the DRP/SPA (Dharavi Development Project / Special Planning Authority) was arrived at.”