2023-08-31 19:49:02
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in a fresh article has said Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta was behind a “covert” lobbying campaign to weaken key environmental regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The article, which was published on Thursday, said that the Indian government approved the changes without public consultation and implemented them using what experts say are illegal methods.
The OCCRP said in January 2021, Vedanta Group Chairman Anil Agarwal told former environment minister Prakash Javadekar that the government could add “impetus” to India’s economic recovery by allowing mining companies to boost production by up to 50 percent without having to secure new environmental clearances.
The George Soros-backed news organisation claimed Vedanta’s oil business, Cairn India, also successfully lobbied to have public hearings scrapped for exploratory drilling in oil blocks it won in government auctions.
Since then, six of Cairn’s controversial oil projects in Rajasthan have been approved despite local opposition, the OCCRP report said.
OCCRP claimed that it has analysed thousands of Indian government documents obtained using freedom of information requests and these records ranged from internal memos and minutes of closed-door meetings and even letters like the one from Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal.
OCCRP’s report on Vedanta comes a day after the media group published a report on Adani Group claiming that millions were invested in some publicly traded stocks of Adani Group via “opaque” Mauritius funds that “obscured” involvement of alleged business partners of the Adani family.
Here are the top points highlighted by OCCRP in its report:
1. In January 2021, the OCCRP report claimed Agarwal wrote a letter to the then environment minister Prakash Javadekar saying the government could add ‘impetus’ to India’s economic recovery by allowing mining companies to boost production by up to 50 per cent without having to secure new environmental clearances.
“Apart from immediately boosting production and economic growth, this will generate huge revenue for the Government and create massive jobs,” Agarwal told the minister, recommending that the change could be made with ‘a simple notification’,” stated the OCCRP article.
2. Two weeks after Agarwal wrote to Javadekar, the environment ministry received a letter from the head of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry lobby group making a similar request. Both pointed out that the government had done as much for coal mines a few years earlier, so it would be a simple matter of applying the rules to other types of mining.
3. The report said Javadekar quickly got to work. “VIMP [Very Important],” he scribbled on the letter, directing the secretary of his ministry and the director general of forestry to “discuss [the] policy issue”.
4. In June, Vedanta’s chief executive, Sunil Duggal, wrote directly to PM Narendra Modi, arguing that he could “boost the economic engine immediately” by scrapping the current method of granting environmental approvals, the report stated. This would not only drive growth, he promised, but create jobs and help to “alleviate poverty” in “backward” parts of the country.
5. The report said PMO forwarded the letter to the environment secretary, who was already at work to discuss the issue. But the idea faced internal opposition, the OCCRP report said.
6. In early 2022, after a series of closed-door meetings, India’s environment ministry loosened regulations to allow mining companies to increase production by up to 50 per cent “without needing to hold public hearings”, which many in the industry considered the most onerous requirement of the environmental clearance process, the report further claimed.
7. Details of one of the meetings in July show officials feared loosening the rules would break the law, and give a free pass to unrestrained mining in ecologically sensitive areas.
A summary of an internal meeting by the Joint Expert Appraisal Committee — made up of ministry officials and mining experts — noted similar concerns, and said any increase in mining production should require some form of public consultation.
8. In October, the environment ministry, now led by Bhupender Yadav, published a memo that allowed mines to expand production by only 20 percent without public hearings — less than half what Agarwal and the mining industry lobby group had wanted.
But the issue was revived when Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, who reports directly to Modi, spearheaded an internal push to cut government red tape.
9. The report claimed that though the head of a major industry lobby group and India’s mining secretary also pressed for the rules to be loosened, internal documents and government sources pointed that Vedanta’s lobbying was key. The environment ministry then changed the regulations by publishing an office memo — meant to be used for inter-office communication — on its website.
10. In April 2022, the Indian Environment Ministry published a memo scrapping the requirement for miners to hold public consultations when expanding production by up to 40 per cent, and requiring only written feedback up to 50 per cent. Experts, quoted by the OCCRP report, said this would exclude a large section of the Indian public who cannot read or write, or who struggle to negotiate government bureaucracy.
At the global platform, PM Modi has pledged to reduce India’s carbon emissions by a billion tons by 2030 and reach net zero emissions within 40 years after that. Experts, who reviewed OCCRP’s findings, have said the latest reports show the Indian government has prioritised the interests of oil and mining companies over the fight against climate change, OCCRP claimed.