The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Hear all parties on distillery issue, court tells Centre

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Hear all parties on distillery issue, court tells Centre

Special Correspondent

Kings India Chemicals has proposed to set up distillery unit

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Thursday directed the Union Environment and Forest Ministry, which is the Competent Authority, to afford sufficient opportunity to all the parties concerned in a writ petition before deciding on establishing a distillery at Vadaseri village in Thanjavur district.

A Division Bench comprising Justices Elipe Dharma Rao and K.K.Sasidharan passed the order while disposing of a writ petition filed by the Vadaseri Grama Vivasayigal Sangam (farmers association), seeking a direction to the Thanjavur Collector to reconvene a public hearing in Vadaseri or in any location other than the site of the proposed project.

Kings India Chemicals Corporation had proposed to set up the distillery unit. The villagers protested that the unit would extract all the groundwater rendering agriculture operations unviable.

The association submitted that a public hearing was held on April 9. While the petitioner contended that no villager was allowed for the hearing and were, in fact, chased away by police, the official authorities contended that an unruly mob went berserk and attacked the official vehicles of officers present there. Hence, the present petition.

In its order, the Bench said the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) had submitted that totally 690 representations were received from the general public at the public hearing. While 84 were against the unit, 606 supported the project. From the material placed on record, it was clear that the public hearing was conducted on April 9 and the District Collector in charge forwarded the full minutes of the meeting, reports, representations received from public and also the letter with reasons for delay in starting the public hearing, to the Member-Secretary, TNPCB. He, in turn, forwarded it to the Competent Authority.

After hearing the contentions, the Bench observed that the various aspects needed assessment on factual aspects of the matter. The court, while exercising its extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution, could not go into such factual aspects raised and denied on either side.

The Bench said it was quite aware that even a disputed question of fact, which could be decided on the material placed on record, could very well be decided by a writ court. But, in the case on hand, the matter was pending consideration before the Competent Authority, which was competent enough to go into all such aspects before arriving at any conclusion by giving due hearing and opportunity to all the parties concerned.

Therefore, without going into the merits and demerits of the claims of either party, the Bench said it was giving a direction to the Competent Authority.

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