ALBANY — Buffalo’s Delaware North Cos. is back in the hunt for a deal to run a lucrative casino at Aqueduct racetrack following the state’s decision Thursday to scuttle a tentative contract for the facility.

The Paterson administration announced it is rescinding the deal to award the casino rights at the racetrack in Queens to a consortium of gambling and finance interests after the state Lottery Division said it could not issue a gambling license to the team. Two investigations are under way into the process that the state used in recently awarding the pact.

Aqueduct Entertainment Group, which won, then lost the deal, threatened legal action for what its lawyer called an “arbitrary and capricious” decision by the state.

The deal had been tentatively awarded by Gov. David A. Paterson and the leaders of the Senate and Assembly but was still subject to a final set of negotiations.

The bidder had promised the state $300 million in an upfront franchise fee payment, which was to have been used to reduce part of the more than $2 billion deficit in the state’s current fiscal year that ends March 31.

Delaware North had been one of the finalists for the casino rights, which includes running a facility with at least 4,500 slot machines for the next 30 years in what would be New York City’s only casino.

While there is a push by some lawmakers to select a new winner from the remaining bidders, the Paterson administration signaled its desire for a new process. Sources say it could end up with a consortium of some of the bidding groups getting the casino rights.

“The executive branch advocates that the selection of the Aqueduct [slots] franchisee be done pursuant to an expedited, transparent, apolitical and publicly accountable procurement process,” the administration said in a statement Thursday.

William Bissett, president of Delaware North Cos. Gaming & Entertainment, said the company and its partners remain “very interested” in the Aqueduct project.

Delaware North won the Aqueduct bid in 2008 but had to drop out last year when it could not come up with a payment to Albany of $370 million. It then rebid, along with some other high-profile gambling interests, for the track casino.

The privately held Buffalo company runs a number of gambling interests, including Finger Lakes Racetrack. Its offer had faced an uphill battle in the latest bidding round because of how it had backed away from the project last year.

The Aqueduct selection process had been criticized for at least six months because the terms of the bidding kept changing through the process. Following the selection of Aqueduct Entertainment Group, whose partners included individuals with close political ties to Democrats in Albany, especially in the Senate, the criticism mounted to the point that federal investigators downstate and the state inspector general’s office in Albany launched probes of the process.

The casino was first approved, along with other racetrack casinos in Western New York and elsewhere in the state, in 2001. It has been stalled by legal, political and financial obstacles. The state has been losing an estimated $1 million in casino revenue-sharing proceeds for every day the Aqueduct facility has not been open.