Vedanta’s environmental track record comes back to bite it

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Editor's note: This is the ninth edition of Thirty-six, The Morning Context's weekly newsletter on countless ecosystems in flux across India. It has not been a good week for the Vedanta Group in Goa. In two separate instances, the multinational mining firm’s controversial track record of violating environmental norms and causing adverse impacts on ecology and people in the coastal state came under the official spotlight. Both instances were setbacks to the company; one appears to be temporary while the other could be permanent.  In one instance, an expert committee of the union environment ministry strongly criticized a proposal by the firm to seek green clearance for expanding operations at its plant in North Goa and returned it. The experts also asked Vedanta to address “shortcomings” in its proposal for clearance and told the company to “undertake corrective action” in the context of its failure to comply with certain obligations.  The expert committee’s observations, which were first reported briefly in a few local newspaper editions after being released by the environment ministry on its website, are very critical about two things. First, …