India's SC asks Lafarge for Chhatak papers

FE Team | Published: January 17, 2011 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

NEW DELHI, Jan 16 (bdnews24.com): India's Supreme Court has asked Lafarge to furnish documents it had presented to financial institutions to get funds for its integrated project of limestone mining in Meghalaya state and cement plant at Chhatak in Sunamganj.
The court order came after a lawyer assisting its special forest bench as amicas curiae submitted before it that India's obligations to Bangladesh had nothing to do with supply of limestone from the mining project of the Lafarge in Meghalaya to the French multi-national's plant at Chhatak.
India's apex court in February 2010 had halted limestone mining by Lafarge Umiam Mining Private Limited or LUMPL at Nongtrai in East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya. The LUMPL is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lafarge Surma Cement Limited (LSCL).
The LUMPL had earlier been transporting limestone mined from Nongtrai to the cement plant of the LSCL and Spanish company Cementos Molins at Chhatak by a 17-kilometre long cross-border conveyer belt.
The LSCL plant at Chhatak has a capacity of producing 1.5 tonnes of cement every year.
Indian government had on March 24 last year told the Supreme Court that the latter's order halting mining and supply of limestone from Meghalaya to Lafarge's cement plant in Bangladesh was disturbing the bilateral relation between the two neighbours.
India's Attorney General G E Vahanvati had told the court that the order to halt limestone mining had hit production at the Lafarge's US $ 255 million state-of-the-art plant at Chhatak.
But during a hearing on the case last week, lawyer Harish Salve submitted to the court that the LUMPL's mining project in Meghalaya had "no connection with the commitments of India to Bangladesh".
He also submitted that the LUMPL was mining limestone in a forest land. "It is obvious that this area was forest and any suggestion to the contrary is simply not true," he said. Salve is assisting the court in the case as amicus curiae.