Sahara real estate sale edges forward with Adani Group term sheet

The Adani group is set to buy Aamby Valley, Mumbai’s Sahara Star hotel, and a nationwide basket of Sahara properties, as per a term sheet dated September 6, 2025, submitted by the Sahara Group in the Supreme Court, according to two legal sources, who requested anonymity. The deal has to be approved by the apex court.

The sources have confirmed that due to the sensitivity of the transaction, the specific financial details have been kept confidential and will be presented only to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope. According to documents reviewed by India Today, the Adani Group would be obligated to deposit the entire decided amount into the Sebi-Sahara Refund Account or an account directed by the Court.

The lump-sum, single-block deal includes more than 88 properties—headlined by the Aamby Valley township and Sahara Star hotel—to Adani Properties, rather than a piece-by-piece pricing approach.

A court-supervised, one-shot sale could end years of stalled monetisation and speed up refunds to legitimate claimants via the Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India)–Sahara Refund Account. It would also move one of India’s largest real-estate bundles to a single buyer. If approved, the order could set a template for complex asset sales under court oversight.

The matter is set to come up before the Supreme Court at the next hearing on October 14, and the proceeds will be moved to the SEBI–Sahara Refund Account, per court direction.

What’s on the block?

The bundle includes the 8,810-acre Aamby Valley City in Maharashtra. Then there is the Sahara Star hotel located near the Mumbai airport, and a host of properties across Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Uttarakhand.

There is no court-appointed receiver at this stage. The application before the Supreme Court was filed by Sahara India Commercial Corporation Ltd. (SICCL) on behalf of Sahara entities. Sahara’s management is negotiating the sale.

In an application filed before the Supreme Court, the Sahara Group has sought extraordinary, comprehensive protections from the Court through invocation of the Court’s powers to ensure “complete justice” under Article 142 of the Constitution.

The Sahara Group has asked the Supreme Court to issue orders exempting all the acquired properties from all regulatory or criminal inquiries, investigations, and proceedings. It has also requested that all claims or liabilities related to the properties must be addressed only to the Supreme Court and that no other court, tribunal, or government body has the authority to entertain or interfere with the sale of these properties. It has asked for all existing attachment orders, restraints, prohibitions, and injunctive orders placed on the properties by various authorities to be immediately vacated.

To manage the funds, Sahara has proposed the formation of a high-level committee, headed by a former Supreme Court judge, to oversee the execution of the sale, handle objections or competing offers, and identify, adjudicate, and discharge Sahara’s remaining liabilities.

Documents reviewed by India Today state that previous attempts to sell assets had failed due to poor market conditions, lack of credible buyers, and the presence of multiple ongoing lawsuits, which collectively destroyed buyer confidence. Additionally, Sahara states that Sebi, despite trying multiple times and hiring specialised brokers and consultants, was unable to sell or liquidate any Sahara assets.

Further complicating matters, various investigating agencies initiated independent inquiries against Sahara and its officials, which directly impacted the group’s ability to sell its assets.

Given these persistent challenges, the management concluded that selling each property separately would “take years”. To overcome this and guarantee the maximum value in the most expedited timeline, they decided to sell substantially all of their remaining assets in a single block/lot to one single entity—the Adani Group.

The Adani Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Sahara Story

Sahara’s long-running controversy centres on how it raised money from millions of small investors and what happened to those funds. In 2012, India’s capital markets regulator Sebi ruled that two Sahara firms had sold optionally fully convertible debentures without proper approval and ordered refunds with interest; the Supreme Court upheld that order.

Founder Subrata Roy was jailed in 2014 for non-compliance and later released on parole as asset sales and repayments dragged on. Many Sahara assets were attached under court and agency actions, and a Sebi–Sahara Refund Account was created to return money to eligible claimants. Parallel probes into Sahara-linked cooperatives and intermediaries have kept the group under scrutiny, with litigation and enforcement moves continuing for years.

Sahara once held an airline, sports teams, hotels in London and New York, financial, mutual fund and life-insurance businesses, the Aamby Valley township, and a land bank of about 36,000 acres. Most of these assets have since been attached or sold.

Meanwhile, Adani’s property arm has scaled up since 2010 across Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune and Gurugram, using a two-track playbook: buying stressed builders at low valuations and bidding aggressively for government redevelopment. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index recently valued the unit at about $1.5 billion. In November 2022, Adani Properties won the Dharavi redevelopment mandate with a bid of ₹5,069 crore. Adani acquired Radius Estates out of insolvency in January 2023 for about $9 million after a $330 million default. Recently, India’s antitrust regulator—the Competition Commission of India—approved the acquisition of Jaiprakash Associates by Adani Enterprises and Adani Infrastructure & Developers under the corporate insolvency resolution process. The group says it has delivered roughly 31 million sq ft and has about 108 million sq ft under development. The Sahara portfolio, if cleared by the Court, would extend this stressed-asset-plus-redevelopment strategy at a national scale.