Anti-Sterlite stir orchestrated by vested interests, Vedanta tells High Court

Source: thehindu.com

Natural resources company Vedanta Limited on Wednesday told the Madras High Court that the 2018 protests against its Sterlite copper smelting plant in Thoothukudi, during which 13 people were shot dead in a police firing incident, were orchestrated by a group of non-governmental organisations and activist groups operating for profit and with ulterior motives.

The company accused the State government of having yielded to pressure from such organisations by ordering the permanent closure of the plant on May 23, 2018, exactly a day after the firing. Such drastic action against an industry was nothing but a knee-jerk reaction aimed at appeasing people with vested interests and promoting a political agenda, it alleged.

Vedanta pointed out that Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami himself had told the media that anti-social elements were behind the mass protests that culminated in a police firing, the cause of which was now being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), following court orders.

‘Adversarial position’

In a rejoinder to a counter-affidavit filed by the State government last week, opposing the company’s plea for reopening the plant, Vedanta said: “It is unfortunate that, in the instant proceedings, the respondent number 1 (State government) is taking an adversarial position and is not considering the representations of more than 1.5 lakh people supporting the restarting of the unit.”

Claiming that there had not been any continuous or widespread protests or complaints against the copper plant for a long time, as claimed by the State government in its counter-affidavit, the company said that had there been any, it was inconceivable how inspection reports of the years 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 had recorded that there were no complaints.

Further, the Joint Chief Environmental Engineer of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board had submitted an inspection report on February 27, 2018, just months before the closure of the unit, recommending the renewal of the Consent To Operate (CTO) document, to be issued to the unit under the Air Act of 1981 and the Water Act of 1974, the company pointed out.

Contesting the government’s claim that a decision taken in 1994 to permit the establishment of the copper plant as well as one taken last year to close it down permanently were policy decisions, Vedanta said such a claim had been made only to circumvent the statutory requirement to follow the principles of natural justice before shutting down the plant. It contended that the Supreme Court had, on February 18, clearly held that the closure order was administrative in nature.
Discrimination charge

“Even assuming, without admitting, that it is a policy decision…it is clearly aimed at a singular industry rather than a class of industries. It is impossible, arbitrary and unreasonable to classify the petitioner as a class in itself, and hence, any such policy would be hit by Article 14 (equality before law) of the Constitution by virtue of being a naked discrimination,” it said.

Denying outright the accusation that it was a chronic violator of anti-pollution laws, Vedanta said it was a responsible corporate citizen and had spent over ₹500 crore in the last 10 years on raising the standards of environmental performance of its smelters.