UltraTech broke the law and is close to getting away with it
The cement company has been in violation of the mandated measures to reduce air pollution at its limestone project in Gujarat. Now the environment ministry wants to cut it some slack.
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Editor's note: In late June last year, amid COVID-19 restrictions, residents of 10 villages in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district gathered on a village road. The road was used by trucks carrying limestone from a captive mine belonging to UltraTech Cement, an Aditya Birla Group company and India’s largest cement manufacturer. For years, the villagers had suffered air pollution caused by the dust raised by the trucks, which travelled to UltraTech’s cement plant in Amreli district 90 km away. They decided to not let the trucks pass until the state government issued an order stopping the trucks from plying through their villages. They were not asking for anything outside the law. The UltraTech mine’s environmental clearance letter stated that its trucks should not cross the villages. The two-page letter is a permission issued by the union environment ministry to industrial and mining projects under the EIA Notification, 2006, and contains conditions that are meant to serve as safeguards against any adverse environmental impact. Not following a condition in the clearance is a violation of the law. Yet, UltraTech’s trucks continued to pass through the …
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