Greenpeace lauds India court ruling on illegal coal allocations
by Nita Bhalla

Thomson Reuters Foundation    Translate This Article
26 September 2014

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Greenpeace India has lauded a landmark ruling by the country's top court to scrap 214 coal blocks given by the government to various companies after the allocations were deemed to be illegal and arbitrary.

The Supreme Court verdict is a victory for the environment over corruption in the mining industry, said Greenpeace India, urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to reverse 'its excessive reliance on coal power as the engine of economic growth'.

'It's a strong message from the highest court in the country to the government and industry that the laws of the land cannot be circumvented and disregarded,' said Vinuta Gopal, Greenpeace India's Climate and Energy campaigner.

'The government has a stark choice - whether to develop a pro-people, pro-green economic model, or stick with corrupt, expensive, dirty energy,' she added in a statement late on Wednesday.

India is desperate for power, and coal is expected to remain at the heart of its energy security for decades. Coal fuels more than two-thirds of the power generated in India, yet a third of the country's 1.2 billion people have no access to electricity.

While the government and corporations are investing in cleaner energies such as solar and wind, analysts say it is nowhere near enough to power India's industrial growth.

The graft scandal dubbed 'Coalgate' came to light in 2012, after a government audit showed that allocating the resources, instead of auctioning them off, had cost the exchequer as much as $33 billion over the past two decades.

Power, steel and cement companies who were allocated blocks must now return them by the end of March, and the government will have to auction them off. Shares in some companies that invested heavily in coal mining projects sank after the ruling.

FIGHT OVER FOREST

One of the coal projects affected is the Mahan block in India's central state of Madhya Pradesh.

The project has been at the centre of bitter battle between local villagers and the Mahan Coal Ltd (MCL)—jointly owned by Essar Energy Plc and the Aditya Birla-owned Hindalco Industries Ltd—which wants to mine part of the Mahan forest for coal.

Villagers, supported by Greenpeace India, oppose the project in Singrauli district, saying that it will destroy the timber, leaves and seeds of a centuries-old forest of Sal trees on which they depend for income.

MCL says only a few thousand people will be affected, and they will be compensated for lost income for as long as they live. The company has invested $3.2 billion in the project, but has not started mining yet due to a lack of official consent for villagers.

'Mining in Mahan would mean loss of livelihoods and rich biodiversity. The government should review the criteria on which coal blocks are allocated and spare the blocks in the forest areas,' said Greenpeace India's Gopal.

MCL officials were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Alisa Tang) )

© Copyright 2014 Reuters

Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. 'Reuters' and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. For additional information on other Reuters media services please visit reuters.com/newsagency. 

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based-Total Knowledge based-programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.