Adani power plant will destroy more forests than projected, experts say

In Uttar Pradesh’s Mirzapur forest division, plains meet the undulating foothills of the Vindhya mountain range. The region, where trees of tendu and sal stand tall with medicinal plants and grasslands, is home to sloth bears, jungle cats, and striped hyena.

Within this division, in an area known as Dadri Khurd, a company called Mirzapur Thermal Energy (UP) has taken the first steps towards obtaining an environmental clearance to construct a 1,600-megawatt coal-based thermal power plant. The company is a new subsidiary of the Adani Group, and proposes to build the plant on 365.19 hectares of land it owns here, according to its submission before the expert appraisal committee on June 28. This committee is a body under the ministry of environment, forests, and climate change, which advises the government on green clearances for proposed development projects.

Of the 365.19 hectares, the company is seeking “forest clearance” for around 12 hectares of forest land, which suggests that only 12 hectares of the land on which it seeks to set up the project is forest land.

But experts and activists say this is misleading. They point out that a parcel of 665 hectares of land in Dadri Khurd, within which the project site falls, is recorded as a forest in state government records – specifically, in a 1952 state government gazette.

Under the Supreme Court’s 1996 Godavarman judgement, “any area recorded as forest in the government record irrespective of the ownership” should be considered forest land.

In a June 28 letter to the environment ministry, environmentalist Debadityo Sinha, founder of the Vindhyan Ecology and National History Foundation in Mirzapur, noted that based on the 1952 notification, the 665 hectares were “supposed to be notified as a forest” under section 20 of the Indian Forest Act of 1927. But while 106 hectares had been notified as such, 558 hectares were “yet to be notified”, he said. A former forest official familiar with Mirzapur confirmed that the proposed power plant site falls within these 665 hectares.

Forest land that is yet to be notified as such is common across the state. In his letter, Sinha noted that in Uttar Pradesh, 27% of the land allotted to the forest department is yet to be formally notified as forest. In Mirzapur forest division alone, over 7,300 hectares that are classified as forest land in state records are still a notification away from being declared as forest.

This is the second time that a thermal power plant is being proposed on the same Dadri Khurd site.

In 2014, the environment ministry granted environmental clearance to Welspun Energy to build a 1,320-MW coal-based thermal power plant on the same site. However, Sinha and two other petitioners filed a case in the National Green Tribunal, in which they argued that the environmental impact assessment for the project contained false and incomplete information about forests and wildlife in the area.

In 2016, the NGT ordered in favour of the petitioners and asked the company to restore the project site to its “original condition”.

Scroll emailed the Adani group as well as the state’s revenue and forest departments to ask about the site’s status as forest land, and the damage that the project would do. This story will be updated if they respond.

Why the site is a forest

The Godavarman judgement stated that the word “forest” was to be “understood according to its dictionary meaning”, and that the provisions of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 “for the conservation of forests and the matters connected therewith must apply clearly to all forests so understood”.

Under such reasoning, there could be no question that Dadri Khurd was forest land, experts said. “Dadri Khurd has a dense forest where the forest department works, does plantations, and protects the flora-fauna,” said the former official familiar with Mirzapur. “It is also one of the few spots in India which supports a habitat for sloth bears.”

This is underlined by official observations made by the forest department in the past. In a 2020 letter, the divisional forest officer of Mirzapur wrote to the division’s conservator of forests about a solar power plant that the Adani group had proposed to set up in Dadri Khurd. In the letter, which Scroll has seen, he noted that the project site was surrounded by three reserved forests as well as forests of dry bamboo and butea tree, commonly known as flame of the forest, which the letter described as “unique forest wealth of the Vindhyan region”. The proposed project could result in “unfavourable impacts on the forest’s flora, fauna, and biodiversity”, the officer said.

Others who have assessed the land, including consultants for corporations, have arrived at a similar conclusion. Following a 2011 site visit conducted in connection with the earlier thermal power plant proposed by Welspun, WAPCOS, the consultants conducting the environmental impact assessment, found “dense vegetation/forest” in the south-east part of the project site.

Moreover, in its judgement in the case against the Welspun thermal plant, the National Green Tribunal noted that a “land-use land/cover map” of Mirzapur district showed that the project site was “mostly occupied by deciduous forest”, while a part of it had agriculture and plantations.

Though the site has undergone considerable deforestation since then, Sinha said, it is still technically a forest and should be protected. “The entire project has many components, like a railway line, roads, water-supply pipeline,” said Sinha. He added that the project “will fragment the forest and disturb the adjoining forest areas, causing irreversible damage to hydrology and wildlife habitats of this region”.

The 1952 notification

According to minutes of a June 28 meeting of the expert appraisal committee, Mirzapur Thermal Energy (UP) is currently seeking the environment ministry’s approval for the “terms of reference” of the project’s environmental impact assessment – that is, it needs the government to approve the parameters that will be evaluated in the assessment, such as the proposed project’s impact on air and water quality.

Obtaining this approval is the first step towards gaining environmental clearance. Once the ministry approves the terms of reference, the company conducts the environmental impact assessment, typically through consultants. Based on this assessment, they are mandated to then conduct public consultations with project-impacted communities, and address all significant concerns before submitting the assessment to the government.

The minutes document states that 364.5 hectares of the land in question is “private land”. But experts note that according to the 1952 state government gazette notification, 665 hectares of land in Dadri Khurd, including the proposed site, were transferred to the state’s forest department under the UP Zamindari Abolition and Land Act, 1950.

The former forest officer explained that confusion over the land’s status may have arisen because while the forest department marked these regions as forests in its records, the revenue department did not do so. “The 1952 gazette notification made it clear that this land could only be with the forest department,” the officer said. “But the revenue department did not record it as a forest in their maps, and so somehow a lot of this land ended up being sold to the common public.”

Over the years, farmers who owned and cultivated parcels of land in Dadri Khurd sold them to the Adani group, the official explained. “The registry of the land might be legally right and in order, but if the origin of the land is wrong, then selling it to someone is null and void,” said the officer.

The Welspun project

In its 2016 judgement against the Welspun project, the National Green Tribunal flagged several problems with the proposal and the process that the proponents had followed.

It observed that it is “evident that the project is surrounded by forest” and “thus the issue of wildlife in the area deserves serious consideration”. It also noted that based on the facts presented to the bench, it appeared that no member of the Wildlife Institute of India, which usually conducts site visits as a part of clearance process, had done so to assess “the issues raised in relation to forest and wildlife”.

It also pointed out concerns with the public hearing held with regard to the project. Specifically, it stated that videos recorded of these hearings in Dadri Khurd proved that “gun toting men” were present, which was “bound to strike fear” in those attending it and “dominate their free will”. Based on this, it would be difficult to call this public hearing “free and fairly conducted”. In conclusion, the bench said that the “entire process of consideration and appraisal to the proposal to grant EC is found tainted”.

About the Adani Group’s current proposal, Sinha noted that while as a profit-making company, it “is well in their right” to apply for an environmental clearance, the state government is “constitutionally mandated’ to safeguard forests and wildlife.

Activists and experts worry that the Adani group could secure an environmental clearance, and the forest clearance it seeks, despite the National Green Tribunal’s past judgement.

“The NGT judgement is largely based on the inadequacies in the process, not so much on actual ecological status of the site and the possibility of unacceptable harm to the region,” said Sharadchandra Lele, a distinguished fellow with Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. He added that a new company applying for a clearance could seek to assure the government that it would adhere to better processes, conduct a thorough environmental impact assessment, and then mitigate the project’s impacts on the environment.

But Sinha pointed out that according to a 2022 clarification of the environment ministry pertaining to the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, “no non-site specific proposal can be entertained” for forest clearances – that is, that a project could not seek to clear and use forest land unless it had a specific requirement to use that particular piece of land.

“This thermal power project is non-site specific,” Sinha said. “If the government really wants to bring it in, they can allot a different land which is not ecologically sensitive and has minimal environmental impacts.”

Experts and activists are also concerned about the fact that, though in multiple instances, government officials and private individuals have asserted that the land is forested, in one instance, officials reached a different conclusion about a part of it. The minutes document notes that the Adani group initially considered seeking forest clearance for an additional 0.6 hectares of forest land, but then decided against it, stating that it had been found to be “non-forest land”. They arrived at this conclusion through a joint inspection of the forest and revenue department in April this year, which “confirmed” that the area was not forest land – the minutes noted that in line with the expert committee’s orders, this land was to be used by the company solely for “plantation/green belt purposes”.

Lele, said that bad land records as in this case often “become the source of bypassing legal hurdles and barriers for project proponents”.

Sinha argued that with regard to the area’s wildlife, the risk to the sloth bear was of particular concern – the species is listed in Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act, which comprises species that have the highest degree of legal protection. He explained that some years ago, he had proposed to the forest department that a sloth bear conservation reserve be set up within the 665 hectares that were transferred to the forest department in 1952.

In 2019, the divisional forest officer of Mirzapur wrote a letter to his senior officers in the forest department proposing that such a reserve be established. “We have not had a response to the proposal yet, despite several follow ups and RTIs,” said Sinha.