The Hindu Business Line, Feb 18, 2010
“It has become clear that Vedanta isn't interested in shareholder engagement and taking shareholder seriously.”
Vidya Ram, London, Feb. 18
A campaign to encourage shareholders in Mr Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Resources to sell their stakes is hotting up.
Britain's Universities Superannuation Scheme, USS, the main final salary pension scheme for universities in Britain, and several local council governments are being approached amid ongoing controversy about Vedanta's plans for a bauxite mine in Lanjigarh, Orissa.
“We are lobbying all the investors we can,” said Ms Lindsay Duffield of Survival International, a London-based NGO, which works with tribal people across the world and has been actively involved in the Orissa dispute.
On Thursday, British NGO the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust said it had sold its £1.9 million stake in Vedanta less than two weeks after the Church of England sold its £3.8 millionstake.
“After nine or ten months the response of the company to the Trust has been little more than empty rhetoric. There is a high degree of frustration with their answers to our concerns, and there comes a point where we need to pull out for ethical reasons,” said a spokesman for Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
“It has become clear that Vedanta isn't interested in shareholder engagement and taking shareholder seriously. Any ethical investment fund at all concerned about human rights will have experience with that,” says Survival International's Duffield.
Vedanta's Orissa project has shot into the international spotlight in the past couple of weeks after Amnesty International released a report condemning the project, both over the flouting of environmental requirements at the refinery, and concerns about the impact that a planned bauxite mine would have on the 8,000 strong Dongria Kondh people who live in the area.
The report calls for environmental concerns expressed by Orissa's pollution control board to be dealt with before the refinery can be expanded and a consultation to be conducted with the local community.
Co refutes charges
Vedanta denied the charges levelled against it and on Thursday, responded to criticisms from another NG0, Action Aid, which warned that “Vedanta's proposed destruction of the sacred mountain of the Kondh tribe in Eastern India could destroy their way of life and their precious environment forever.”
Vedanta said it couldn't have established the refinery without the support of the local people: “Vedanta strongly denies any allegations of pollution of the environment in Lanjigarh and of violation of human rights,” said the company. “Vedanta Alumina project is committed to uplift the lives of people of Kalahandi, adopting the best international practices.”
Green group seeks cancellation of clearance to Vedanta refinery
Economic Times, Feb 19, 2010
BHUBANESWAR: A green NGO on Friday urged the central government to cancel the clearance granted to the Vedanta group for its alumina refinery in Orissa. It charged the firm with violating the clearance conditions, and said trucks bringing raw material to refinery were polluting the air.
Biswajit Mohanty, secretary of the Wildlife Society of Orissa, has written to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, alleging that Vedanta is flouting the conditions in its clearance letter by buying bauxite ore elsewhere and then carting it to its refinery on trucks that were causing air pollution.
A Vedanta spokesman pointed out that the refinery is the first in the country and among the few in the world with a "zero discharge system. The environmental measures adopted in the plant with respect to air and water pollution is among the best and performance of the same is being regularly monitored by State pollution Control Board".
The spokesman said: "Vedanta strongly denies any allegations of pollution of the environment in Lanjigarh." But Mohanty stuck to his charge about trucks coming to the refinery and causing air pollution en route. "According to the environment clearance letter the source of bauxite for the alumina refinery will be from the captive bauxite mines located nearby," he said.
The firm, which is a part of NRI Anil Agarwal-promoted Vedanta Resources Plc, has not yet started working the mines, but the alumina refinery has been operating since August 2007.
In 2004, the environment ministry allowed Vedanta to set up and operate the one-million-tonne per annum alumina refinery and a 75 MW captive power plant at Lanjigarh village in Kalahandi district, some 600 km from state capital Bhubaneswar.
"The company is running the refinery with bauxite ore sourced from far away by using trucks. Thousands of heavy trucks are operating to ferry bauxite for the refinery and this is causing enormous air pollution in the locality," Mohanty wrote. "Local tribals are unable to use the roads since they are clogged with the bauxite loaded trucks heading for the plant."
"The procurement of raw material by road transport from far off places, other than by conveyor belts from the adjacent Niyamgiri hill was never proposed by the company in its project report or application filed for environment clearance," he said.
"This was also not considered by the ministry expert committee on environment which appraised the project and granted environment clearance."
According to Mohanty: "In financial year 2008, the Lanjigarh refinery produced 0.267 million tonnes of alumina. In 2009, the Lanjigarh refinery produced 0.586 million tonnes of alumina. "Therefore, at least 1.2 million tonnes of bauxite were consumed in 2009. Using 30 tonne high capacity trucks would mean the movement of least 40,000 trucks in one year."
Mohanty said environment ministry officials overlooked this condition when they inspected the complex recently.
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