CHENNAI: The Vedanta Limited has approached the Madras High Court with a plea against the order of Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board rejecting its latest proposal for granting permission for launching a Green Copper manufacturing unit in Thoothukudi which witnessed tumultuous protests and police firing in 2018 over the environmental degradation caused by the Sterlite Copper smelting unit.
The first bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan on Wednesday directed the respondent authorities, including the TNPCB, to file reply to the petition and adjourned the hearing to February 26.
Senior counsel Satish Parasaran, representing Vedanta Limited, informed the court the company submitted an application on January 9, 2026 for granting consent to operate the Green Copper manufacturing unit but the TNPCB rejected it on January 27 without giving adequate opportunity of hearing the applicant or looking into the features of the proposal for environmentally sustainable mode of manufacturing.
Despite the court previously issuing a direction to the TNPCB to consider the company’s application without minding the pendency of the cases, the counsel blamed the board for outrightly rejecting the proposal.
He explained the proposed plant is entirely a new one with ‘zero-discharge’ and noted the country had been exporting copper but became an importer after closure of Sterlite Copper smelting unit, leading to the country ‘starving for the metal’. The counsel pressed for forming an expert committee to study the proposal.
Additional advocate general J Ravindran, representing the state, said the copper manufacturing unit was closed once for all after it was found causing collateral damage to the environment, and the premises was declared a contaminated area; now it cannot be permitted to open the proposed unit.
Terming the proposal as ‘old wine in a new bottle’, he said it will not be a sustainable project but a ‘sustainable distraction’.
He affirmed no such proposal for launching a new unit could be permitted at the cost of the environment and said the petitioner company could avail of the appellate remedy instead of knocking the doors of the court.