After taking on Adani, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Projects (OCCRP) today released a report wherein it has locked horns with another giant, this time Vedanta Group’s Anil Agrawal.

OCCRP has claimed that Vedanta Group secretly lobbied to weaken India’s key environmental regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic to boost production by 50%.

A major claim made in the OCCRP report

According to OCCRP’s claims, Agrawal had written a letter to the government, asking to loosen the regulations of public hearings, stating that it would help boost the economic reform of the country.

The environment regulations state that before any increment in production in the mining industry, public hearings should be held, to understand the impact of the increased mining activity on the people and the environment.

However, in Jan 2021, Vedanta Group chairman Anil Aggarwal wrote a letter to former environment minister Prakash Javadekar that the government could allow mining companies to increase production by 50% without environmental clearances.

What was in Vedanta’s letter?

The OCCRP report claimed that in Jan 2021, Anil Agarwal wrote a letter to the then environment minister Prakash Javadekar saying that the government could accelerate India’s economic reforms by allowing mining companies to increase production by 50% without securing new environmental clearances.

Apart from promoting manufacturing and economic development, it will bring revenue to India and create massive jobs for the government. Agarwal suggested that the change could be done with a simple notification.

The government loosened the regulations

According to the OCCRP, a series of closed-door meetings later, India’s environment ministry loosened the regulations about holding public hearings, allowing the mining firms to increase production by 50%.

“The environment ministry then changed the regulations by publishing an office memo— meant to be used for inter-office communication— on its website,” reads the OCCRP report.

There was already pressure from the head of a lobby group from the industry, and India’s mining secretary to loosen these regulations. However, OCCRP believes that the letter written by Agrawal was a key factor in the ministry’s decision.

Powerful people mending politics on a whim

The report noted that according to experts, this type of backroom lobbying allows powerful people who are close to the government to bend policies in their favour, even if the local communities and the environment have to pay the price for it. 

According to a study by an independent research entity, changing regulations with office memos and without public debates, the government may also have skirted the law.

How did it take place?

According to OCCRP, summaries of earlier meetings noted that officials were worried that relaxing the rules might lead to breaking the law and allowing uncontrolled mining in areas important for nature.

A summary of an internal meeting by a committee made up of government officials and mining experts shared similar concerns and suggested that any increase in mining should involve some form of public input.

In Oct 2021, the environment ministry, now led by Bhupender Yadav, issued a memo allowing mines to expand production by just 20% without involving the public in hearings – this was less than half of what Agarwal and the mining industry wanted.

However, the matter came up again when cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba pushed for reducing government bureaucracy.

Minutes from a meeting on Dec 9, 2021, show that he told the environment ministry to review its project approval process to see if it was meeting its goals. The report suggests that Gauba’s directive was seen as an order to change various regulations, including those for mining.

“The cabinet secretary wanted us to modify the environmental clearance and forest clearance processes, so we had to do it,” said an unnamed official in the report.

In April 2022, the Environment Ministry released a memo that removed the need for miners to hold public consultations when expanding production by up to 40%.

It only required written feedback for up to 50% expansion. The report points out that this would exclude many Indians who can’t read or write and have difficulties navigating government processes.

However, the report also states that it is unclear if any of the projects of Vedanta Group benefited from the change in the policy.

Vedanta’s controversial projects in Rajasthan

Apart from the alleged letter, OCCRP also alleged Vedanta’s oil business, Cairn India. The report claimed that Cairn successfully advocated for the cancellation of public hearings for exploratory drilling in oil blocks won in government auctions.

The OCCRP report claims that six controversial oil projects by Cairn in Rajasthan have since been approved despite local opposition. OCCRP made this claim based on an analysis of thousands of Indian government documents obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

A spokesperson for Cairn, however, said that the company follows all environmental regulations in its projects.

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