Sanmar's Rs 600 cr projects get SC nod

The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for Chemp-last Sanmar’s Rs 600 crore greenfield PVC complex at Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, which was faced protest for over five years.

“The project has been established by investing huge amount of about Rs 600 crore and has already been commissioned after obtaining necessary approvals and, the-refore, it shall not be in the interest of justice nor in the public interest now to interfere with the project,” a Bench comprising of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Just-ices R M Lodha and B S Chauhan said.

In a judgment rejecting all petitions challenging the environmental clearance to the project, the Bench said, “We do not find any infirmity in the permission granted by the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) on December 19, 2005. Having held that, there is no illegality in the permission granted by the executive engineer on February 27, 2008 either.”

The MoEF clearance had paved the way for Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to give its consent to the project on September 14, 2006, for Chemplast’s PVC plant as well as a Marine Terminal Facility (MTF) and pipeline project.

The judgment came in response to a petition that challenged the clearance given by the Tamil Nadu Public Works Department to Chemplast for laying a 2.5-km underground pipeline to draw raw material vinyl chloride monomer from the jetty at Tiyagavalli village to its plant at Semmankuppam in Cuddalore district.

The court had said that the Uppanar river and its banks at the place where the pipeline passed did not fall under the Coastal Zone Regulations zone as per the 1996 plan, and no environmental clearance was needed for laying such pipelines, said the court.