The politics over the death of 13 people seeking closure of Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper unit in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu continued unabated on Friday with Union Environment Minister Harshvardhan blaming the previous UPA regime for the controversial project and saying his Ministry would look into the matter.
For its part, the Ministry sought to put the blame on the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board asserting that the central green nod is “based on the clearance by the State pollution board.”
“I just returned in the morning and I read about it (Tuticorin) in the newspapers. We will certainly look into what is happening. All this happened during the tenure of the last Government. I do not want to make an issue out of it,” Vardhan said on the sidelines of a Press conference here when asked about the issue.
“In a society, people do agitations and protests and I am not saying against or for it. I am just saying that after coming, I immediately told officials to understand the issue in depth and with seriousness.
All that I have said here is factually correct and when you go into the details, you will be convinced,”. The protest over Vedanta’s Sterlite Copper unit took a violent turn on Tuesday when stones were pelted by agitators and police vehicles were toppled after they were prevented from marching towards the plant. Tamil Nadu Government has already ordered for a permanent closure of the copper unit of Vedanta limited which operates a 4,00,000 tonnes per annum-plant in Tuticorin.
While leaders from the NDA and the Congress are engaged in a blamegame in the matter following the death of locals, sources in the Environment Ministry said that both the Governments had allowed the Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Resources PlC’s owned Sterlite Industries, to skip the mandatory public hearing process while granting green clearance to its expansion plans on the ground that it would be situated inside a notified industrial park in Tuticorin.
Intriguingly, the industrial park itself had no clearance. The sources said that in 2008, Vedanta’s Sterlite Industries limited had sought exemption from public consultation while representing before Environment Ministry’s expert appraisal committee. It cited, the 2006 Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Rules that state: “All Category ‘A’ and Category B1 projects or activities shall undertake public consultation, except… all projects or activities located within industrial estates or parks.”
Taking lenient view in the matter, the committee not only granted the company exemption from public consultation but also allowed its request to use data collected two years back for environment impact assessment (EIA).
However, the approval lapsed after five years as the company’s environmental clearance process was challenged in the court and the project could not take off. The company applied for fresh clearance in 2013. On May 16, 2014, the Environment Ministry clarified that exemption from public consultation “is only available to the projects or activities located within the industrial estates or parks, which have obtained prior environmental clearance under EIA Notification, 2006”.
In December 2014, the Modi Government issued a memorandum stating that exemption from public consultation “is available to the projects or activities or units located in industrial estates or parks, which were notified prior to September 14, 2006, i.e EIA notification coming into force”.
However, the memorandum was quashed by the National Green Tribunal in 2016 even as the Sterlite’s expansion project had already got a five-year extension of the green clearance in March 2015 with an exemption from public consultation on grounds that the industrial complex had been notified prior to the 2006 EIA notification.
The Tuticorin district has been witnessing several protests by locals as well green activists against the plant and its proposed expansion. Protesters have alleged that the plant was polluting ground water in their area.
Following the deaths, Congress President, Rahul Gandhi called it “a brutal example of state-sponsored terrorism”, targeting the AIADMK Government. Rahul also claimed that Tamils were being killed as they refused to “bow” to the ideology of the RSS.