Vedanta's fate 'in Environment Ministry's hands'

The country's senior-most law officer has said the power to decide the fate of multi-national company Vedanta's bauxite mining project in Nyamgiri distrcict in Orissa rests with the Environment and Forest ministry.

Updated on: Jul 23, 2010, 24:18:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The country's senior-most law officer has said the power to decide the fate of multi-national company Vedanta's bauxite mining project in Nyamgiri distrcict in Orissa rests with the Environment and Forest ministry.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had asked Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati to give his opinion on a 2008 Supreme Court order in the case.

Ministry officials were of the opinion the SC in August 2008 had decided the fate of the project by allowing diversion of over 6,000 hectares of forestland towards bauxite mining in Nyamgiri Hills in Lanjigarh, Orissa. Legal officers of the ministry also said the court had directed the ministry to give approval to the project.

But Ramesh was not convinced as the order also said the approval should be given "in accordance with the law". So he asked Vahanvati to give his opinion on the Supreme Courts order in the case.

In his opinion given to the ministry this week, the attorney general has categorically said that "in accordance with law" means that the ministry is free to apply its own mind and decide on merit.

The one-page opinion also gave ministry the powers to review the earlier in-principle approval if there were "cogent and valid reasons" for the same. According to ministry officials, the attorney general had made it clear the SC allowing diversion of the land does not mean that the government has to give approval to the project.

The legal opinion had suddenly given impetus to the ministry's four-member committee, headed by National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena, to examine whether provisions of the Forest Rights Act have been complied with. Another aspect the committee is to look whether the provisions of the in-principle approval had been fully met.

The committee is slated to submit its report by August-end, after which the ministry will decide on the final approval for the project. "The MoEF now has every right to exercise its own mind and decide. The committee's report will form basis for the ministry's final decision," said a senior government functionary.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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