Cement manufacturer Ultratech Cement on Friday moved the Supreme Court against the National Green Tribunal order that quashed the environmental clearances (EC) granted by the Gujarat State Environment Impact Assessment Authority in 2020 to it and its subsidiary Narmada Cement Company for limestone mining at Babarkot village in Gujarat.
A Bench led by Justice SA Nazeer sought response from the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Gujarat government and the state pollution authorities and others after Ultratech urged the apex court that the NGT order should be set aside for being perverse, unsustainable and arbitrary.
Senior counsel AM Singhvi, appearing for the cement manufacturer, argued that that the two mining leases over 14.2045 hectares and 49.8454 hectares were situated at a distance of 600 metres with private and government waste land in between them. Further, there was no corridor or no common boundary connecting the separate blocks/two leases and the same had been certified by the district geologist, Amreli, he contended.
Even the Gujarat geology and mining commissioner had confirmed that both the mining leases in question existed as individual leases, and therefore must be treated as individual leases, the company said in its appeal, adding that the two mining leases were separate leases and did not form part of a cluster.
According to Ultratech, the ECs were granted to it after following complete due process of law. Even the joint committee report observed that the two mines did not form a cluster and the EC process adopted by SEIAA was justifiable.
The tribunal had in June last year, appointed an eight-member joint fact-finding committee to look into the alleged violations and furnish a factual and action-taken report in the matter. Ultratech Cement and NCC had opposed this on the grounds that the EC in question was valid.
“Irrespective of ownership, when the mining lease areas are situated away from each other on separate patches of land without any continous survey numbers and with a distance of 600 meters, the mining lease areas are separate,” the appeal filed through counsel Vinita Bhargava stated, adding that there were no national parks or scantuaries, biosphere reserves or wildlife corridors within 10 km of the mining lease.
Noting that the area in question was more than 50 hectares, the NGT had ruled that it required clearance from the MoEF and not SEIAA and the mining area was an integral part of the total mining area and hence, the “two mining leases together are of more than 50 hectares and cannot be treated as standalone for purposes of EIA (Environment Impact Assessment).”
“…the area being more than 50 hectares has to be treated as category ‘A’ project, requiring appraisal only by MoEF. Even if the two are taken as separate, it is expansion of an existing project in which case also it has to be appraised by MoEF, even if it is less than 50 hectares,” the tribunal had stated in its February order.
The NGT decision had come in response to two appeals that said the grant of EC was in violation of law as the mines were more than 50 hectare and the mines were split into two to subvert Category-A classification while seeking EC. The two companies also have an existing mining lease for 565.93 hectares in the same area.
