The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has called for a report from its regional office in Chennai, to ascertain whether Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Limited violated any conditions imposed on it when it was granted environmental clearance for its plant close to Vedanthangal bird sanctuary.
The Ministry has informed the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) southern zone bench of having written to its integrated regional office on May 8 this year, calling for a ‘certified compliance report’ with respect to the conditional environment clearance granted by it on March 31, 2022 for the expansion of the pharmaceutical company.
The information has been provided in response to a query raised by judicial member Pushpa Sathyanarayana and expert member Satyagopal Korlapati who wanted to know the action taken by the Ministry to ensure that project proponents continue to abide by the conditions imposed on them, while they are granted environment clearance.
The bench had raised the query since the pharmaceutical company had obtained the environment clearance by claiming that its plant was situated 3.72 km away from the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary whereas the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF)-cum-Chief Wildlife Warden (CWC) had claimed otherwise.
In a status report filed before the tribunal on February 15 this year, the PCCF-cum-CWC had stated that the pharmaceutical unit’s expansion site falls within the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary, besides falling within the default eco-sensitive zone of the Karikili bird sanctuary which was 2.3 km away.
After taking note of the PCCF’s report, the bench pointed out that environment clearance for the expansion had been granted when the tribunal was seized of another application filed in 2020 accusing the pharmaceutical company of not having obtained any such clearance. That application was disposed of on September 29, 2022.
While disposing of it, the tribunal had directed the company to pay interim environmental compensation of ₹10 crore. Since the environmental clearance was given six months before this direction, the MoEF had rightly laid a condition that the clearance would be subject to NGT’ orders or that of any other court of law.
However, the Ministry had failed to restrict the clearance to a short period of three or six months, the bench said. It also stated the Ministry ought to have followed up the project and revoked/cancelled the environment clearance if any of the conditions were found to have been violated by the project proponent.
The bench further stated that environmental clearance had been granted on condition that the pharmaceutical company obtain clearance from National Board of Wildlife too, because it claimed to be situated 3.72 km from Vedanthangal bird sanctuary. However, now, the PCCF had contested this claim with respect to distance, it added.
In response to the observations made by the bench, the pharmaceutical company filed a memo on May 10 this year stating that the claim regarding distance was made on the basis of information available on the Tamil Nadu Forest Department’s website, wherein the extent of Vedanthangal bird sanctuary had been mentioned as 73.06 acres. Further, the distance was calculated on the basis of Google Maps, the information available on Parivesh portal of the Centre and other information available in the public domain. Therefore, the company denied having submitted any false information for the purpose of obtaining environment clearances and said no condition had been violated.
The MoEF’s response and the company’s memo were filed in response to an appeal preferred by fishermen leader K.R. Selvaraj Kumar challenging the environment clearance. After taking the reports on file, the bench adjourned the matter for further hearing to July 25 and decided to await the outcome of the report to be filed by MoEF’s regional office.
