Vedanta moves Supreme Court seeking reopening of Sterlite copper plant

On August 18 the Madras HC refused to allow the unit at Tamil Nadu to start functioning again. It has remained shut since April 2018

Mining major Vedanta has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Madras High Court’s (HC’s) refusal to order reopening of Sterlite’s copper smelting plant at Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu.

On August 18, the Madras HC refused to allow reopening of the plant and dismissed all the 10 petitions filed by the company.  The plant has remained closed ever since the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) on April 9, 2018, rejected renewal of consent to operate the plant. This was because the state government ordered the plant to close after 13 people were shot dead by the police on May 22, during a protest against the plant.

While the company said it was a knee-jerk reaction by the state administration, the state government alleged that the plant violated environment laws. The company also said it is incurring around Rs 5 crore loss every day. Back-of-the-envelope calculation peg it at around Rs 3,500-4,000 crore in losses as the factory has been closed for about 800 days.

Meanwhile, a company official said the shutting down of the smelter has led to the country spending $2 billion on import. “The government per se had lost forex of $2 billion, wh­ich was something like abo­ut Rs 15,000 crore per year... So say Rs 35,000-40,000 crore in this two-and-a-half-year peri­od by way of imports of copper, which we would have otherwise produced,” Sterlite Copper Chief Executive Officer Pankaj Kumar told PTI.

“Yes, the loss is tremendous. I mean, one is a monetary loss and the other loss is one that cannot be monetised. For example, the monetary loss for the company is one wherein we lost I would say something around Rs 6,000 cro­re, maybe in the last two and a half years... Plus we used to spend about Rs 600 crore in the vicinity of Thoothu­ku­di... by way of salaries, in some input materials, etc, which has come to zero. So the people here (around 50,000) have suffered because of our closure,” he said.