By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Friday ordered French firm Lafarge, involved in mining limestone in Meghalaya for its cement plants in Bangladesh, to stop its mining operations in the state till further orders.
The bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Aftab Alam ordered Lafarge to stop mining following allegations that the firm has raised funds from various international banks after mortgaging the state’s land it had fraudulently transferred to itself.
The bench ordered Lafarge Umiam Mining Pvt Ltd (LUMPL) to stop its mining operations in Meghalaya on a lawsuit by a civil society group, Shella Action Committee, of the East Khasi Hills district in state.
“In today’s hearing, some questions were raised regarding a few aspects of the operations – to which the honourable Supreme Court was pleased to direct the company to file its responses at the next hearing, which has been fixed for March 19, 2010,” Lafarge said in a statement later.
“In the interim, the honourable court has asked LUMPL to hold its mining operations in abeyance. However, the honourable Supreme Court has allowed the company to export the mined limestone lying at the site,” it added.
“We are studying the details of the order and all necessary information will be provided as per the directions of the honourable Supreme Court – within the stipulated time.”
The lawsuit alleged that by violating the country’s constitutional provisions, the French firm has transferred the land belonging to tribals to itself in collusion with some local groups.
The lawsuit alleged that the firm later “mortgaged the tribal land to foreign banks like the Asian Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the Deutsche Investitutions und Entwicklungsgesellschaft, the European Investment Bank, the Arab Bangladesh Bank and the Standard Chartered Bank”.
“The firm mortgaged the land to raise loan of 153 million US dollars,” said the lawsuit of the tribal society.
The bench earlier on Nov 23, 2007, had allowed the firm to continue its mining operations in the state. The mining had been stopped in April 2007 by the union ministry of environment and forests on the ground that it had fraudulently obtained environment clearance for the project.
A special environment bench, headed by Chief Justice Balakrishnan, said Lafarge would be allowed to restart its mining – subject to the outcome of a cost-benefit analysis of the firm’s proposal to set up a cement plant in Meghalaya.
The bench, which also included erstwhile Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S.H. Kapadia, allowed Lafarge to continue mining for its cement factory in Bangladesh on the recommendations of senior counsel Harish Salve, who has been assisting the court in the matter.
Salve had made the recommendation to allow Lafarge to continue its limestone mining in the Khasi Hills near village Nongtrai after the French firm’s non-executive chairman and former HDFC chairman Deepak S. Parekh explained to him that the deposit of the Nongtrai mines could be best utilized by the Bangladesh plant.
Parekh in his explanatory note had told Salve that “the limestone from the mines can be best utilized in Lafarge’s Bangladesh plant as the harsh terrain of the area and the poor quality of roads makes it economically unviable to transport limestone or cement from the mining site of Nongtrai to the markets in Meghalaya”.