Supreme Court Restrains MHADA From Issuing Work Order For Bandra Redevelopment Project

The Supreme Court recently directed that no work order shall be issued for the proposed MHADA cluster redevelopment project at Bandra Reclamation till 13th August while seeking responses from the State of Maharashtra and other respondents in a batch of petitions challenging the redevelopment scheme.

A bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta directed the respondents to file their counter affidavits within a week, permitted the petitioners to file rejoinders within a week thereafter, and posted the matter for hearing on August 13, 2026.

“Let counter affidavit be filed within a week. Rejoinder affidavit be filed within one week thereafter by petitioner(s). List on 13th August, 2026 to be listed immediately after the fresh matters. Till then, the work order shall not be issued”, the Court said.

The matter concerns MHADA's proposed integrated redevelopment of its 98.27-acre Bandra Reclamation and 34.33-acre Adarsh Nagar layouts. The Bombay High Court had, on July 2, upheld the State Government's Resolutions dated April 25, 2025 and December 15, 2025 governing the redevelopment, along with the tender issued on April 8, 2026 for appointment of a Construction and Development Agency.

The High Court had held that the redevelopment scheme was conceived in larger public interest and rejected challenges mounted by several cooperative housing societies. Adani Properties had emerged as the highest bidder for the projects, but the High Court had recorded the State's statement that no work order would be issued for four weeks to enable the petitioners to approach the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court extended that protection by directing that no work order be issued until the next hearing.

The petition contends that the redevelopment scheme was intended for ageing Medium Income Group (MIG) and Low Income Group (LIG) housing societies and did not include High Income Group (HIG) societies within its scope. It states that MHADA nevertheless included its building in the cluster redevelopment despite having sold the flats on full ownership basis decades ago and despite failing to execute the conveyance deed in favour of the society. The petition also challenges Regulation 33(9)(4)(a) of the Development Control and Promotion Regulations, 2034 and Regulation 21(5) of the MHADA Estate Management Regulations, 1981 as being violative of Articles 14 and 300A of the Constitution.

The society further contends that the High Court failed to consider that an earlier Bombay High Court judgment dated October 15, 2009 had quashed MHADA's demand for increased prices for the tenements and held that conveyance could not be withheld on that basis. It states that a subsequent writ petition seeking conveyance remains pending and MHADA admitted in an affidavit filed in those proceedings that the land was required to be conveyed to the federation of the HIG societies.

The petition also contends that the High Court erred in holding that consent of the society was unnecessary for redevelopment, despite the constitutional challenge to the provisions permitting MHADA to undertake redevelopment without consent where it owns the land. It further alleges that the transit rent of ₹75,000 per month and corpus of ₹30 lakh fixed for its building were determined unilaterally without consultation or any market survey and are below prevailing market rates for Bandra Reclamation.

The petition asserts that the redevelopment violates the procedural safeguards flowing from Article 300A, including the rights to notice, hearing, a reasoned decision and fair compensation. It also challenges the compulsory inclusion of housing societies in the cluster redevelopment framework as being contrary to Sections 16 and 17 of the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act, 1960 and violative of the freedom of association under Article 19(1)(c).

Senior Advocates Chander Uday Singh, Guru Krishna Kumar, Shyam Mehta, Shyam Divan and Navin Pahwa appeared for the petitioners. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, along with Senior Advocates Dhruv Mehta, Mukul Rohatgi and Balbir Singh, appeared for the respondents.

Case: M.I.G. Adarsh Nagar Co-operative Housing Society Ltd. v. State of Maharashtra & Ors. and connected matters