Banishing Coal from Sewri A Case Study By IC Rao
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Preface A small group of activists can achieve results in changing the attitudes of the Government or, in this case a major port, through perseverance. The action we pursued to banish coal from Haji Bunder at Sewri is a case study describing how we went about it. ‘Red Notice’ by Bill Browder is an example which prompted me to record how we did it. For anything to happen, we need good people on the ‘inside’ and a buzz ‘outside’, as mentioned by a professor of urban planning at Columbia University visiting Mumbai. Our case study takes it further into Public Interest Litigation and dogged insistence on answers through the Right to Information Act. It took us two years, and here is how it happened, if you want to use our experience to achieve your objective.
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Banishing Coal from Sewri A Case Study by IC Rao
It was February 2014, when we were selecting points for Meera Sanyal’s manifesto for her election campaign for the Lok Sabha seat from Mumbai (South). We needed one point from each of the six Assembly Constituencies which make up the Lok Sabha Constituency. One of the points I suggested for Sewri was to claim for the city, the large areas within the Port areas occupied by vacant warehouses including the Hindustan Lever soap factory, to be handed over to the Municipality for redevelopment as amenities, which Mumbai city lacks. These land areas have been given out on lease by Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) since 1920s. Though the leases have expired, the lessees are clinging to the land. In February 2014 this was just an idea that this land could be redeveloped. We did not know details. So Meera and I went to Reay Road, turned right into Hay Bunder Road towards the Marine Engineering Research institute (MERI) and the Lal Bahadur Shastri Nautical College. En route, Meera asked me about the large heaps of material we saw in various large plots of land. It turned out to be coal imported from Indonesia. There were huge piles of it towering 15m high. I had known from my earlier job as Director (Projects) of BHP Engineers of Haryana that coal was being unloaded at Hajee Bunder and transported by road to the Tata Electric Power Co. at Trombay, from about 2002. I had not heard of it being stacked in various plots in Sewri for loading on to rail wagons for Bhusaval. Meera was quick to connect the presence of coal with air pollution resulting in increase in lung diseases in Sewri. She had heard about it from her daughter Pia, a recently qualified doctor. We all agreed that the coal mountains inside Mumbai city could be a major health hazard, and its elimination should be dealt with as a citizens’ issue. The next logical step was to collect authentic information. I had learnt about the Right to Information Act (2005) from the late Shyam Chainani who had founded the Bombay Environment Action Group. A tenacious fighter for environment protection and preservation of heritage structures in Mumbai, Matheran and Mahabaleshwar, Shyam had single handedly stopped construction of marine facilities at Nhava island which he considered a pristine ecological zone. Shyam had tutored Mumbai Docklands Regeneration Forum in 20007 on how to oppose a flawed project for construction of a Container Terminal off Victoria Dock in Mumbai Port. With that experience, I knew the procedures and pitfalls in obtaining information through the RTI Act. The best advice I got was to make a shopping list for documents, which one can expect to have been created in the target department. Framing the requests correctly would ensure that one did not receive a stock answer which would say that the Department is not expected to reply to hypothetical questions or explain why. So on 28 April 2014, I submitted to the MbPT the first of many applications under RTI Act 2005 for a copy of the records of Traffic in coal during 2012-13 and 2013-14, quantities imported, quantities stored and destinations, spillage records, unloading methods, handling equipment etc. The application has to be accompanied by Rs 10/- by Postal Order. Fortunately, the MbPT procedures permit acceptance of Rs 10/in cash in the accounts department. The RTI Act allows the Government Dept one month to reply. Each department and sometimes even a sub-department has its own Central Public Information Officer (CPIO). So the application has to reach the concerned CPIO. The clock is reset if the application is sent to the wrong CPIO and is transferred internally to the correct CPIO. My application was sent to the Dy Traffic Manager, appointed as CPIO of the Traffic Dept of MbPT, who responded promptly. The reply of 16 May 2014 revealed that 1.8 million tons of coal had been imported in 2013-14. The maximum quantity stored was 2,03,090 Tons on 9 Mar 2014. This is a mind boggling quantity stored in open plots, inside a city, 4km from the main passenger rail station, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, and 6 km from the Bombay High Court. The reply stated that there was no record of spillage or spontaneous combustion. The reply also described the method by which coal in barges was unloaded, using Poclains Banishing Coal from Sewri 5
( bucket type mobile excavators), transported by dumpers to open storage plots and loaded into wagons by payloaders ( a type of front end loaders). For Meera Sanyal and our team the revelation of the scale of operations and quantities involved was shocking. Working with BHP Engineers Ltd, after I retired from the Indian Navy, I had gained some knowledge of conveying systems for bulk solids. The methods used by MbPT’s importers at Hajee Bunder were at least 50 years behind times. Today barge unloaders use screw type conveyors or well designed grabs which feed into hoppers discharging to enclosed belt conveyors. At every transfer point a dust collector is installed. Such systems have been in use 10km from Hajee Bunder, at Tata Power Co. in Trombay, since 2007. Modern stackers and reclaimers minimise dust in stackyards. On the other hand, payloaders and dumpers used at Hajee Bunder created fugitive dust at every handling. Our first reaction was to go public. Meera was already a public figure as her candidature had been announced for the Mumbai South Lok Sabha constituency. Sewri was part of her constituency. So we started briefing journalists. Our first high profile visitor was Shekhar Gupta, then Chief Editor of Indian Express. We took photographs with him at the coal dump on Modistone plot. We even showed spontaneous combustion in our photographs, which had been denied by MbPT in the official reply to our query under RTI.
With Shekhar Gupta (Centre) Chief Editor of Indian Express and Meera Sanyal
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We explained to Shekhar Gupta that allowing coal to smoulder would produce dioxin a carcinogen. Allowing such combustion in open plots would be a cognisable offence in some countries. In his inimitable style Shekhar Gupta wrote in detail in the Indian Express, the very next day, on 23 April 2014, that you could see Anurag Kashyap epic’s Wasseypur, in Mumbai, rivalling Dhanbad. He went on to quote Deepak Parekh, one of Mumbai’s most respected citizens, Chairman of HDFC Bank and one of India’s preferred problem solvers. Deepak Parekh had articulated that all 750 acres of Port Land should be given to the space starved city, but his delegation to the Prime Minister 5 years earlier had failed to have any effect. Shekhar Gupta was followed by other journalists from Business Standard, Asian Age, Mumbai Mirror, Mid –Day and more. Our team with Girish Bhaskar and Ronak Mastakar in the lead took turns conducting journalists and groups of supporters through the PortLands to show them the horrific coal dumps at Hajee Bunder. The visits also gained notoriety at the time due to the distressing spectacle of the aircraft carrier VIKRANT being readied for scrapping at Darukhana. With the hurly burly of elections, with voting on 24 April 2014, and the long wait till counting day on 7 May, the PortLands issue receded for a while into the background for Meera Sanyal and her campaign team. Win or lose we advised her, the campaign agenda will be still valid. Well, the Modi wave swept the polls and even a lamp post with a BJP ticket would have won. In South Mumbai, an inarticulate non entity was elected. So post elections, we had our work cut out to press on with Meera Sanyal’s agenda to make Mumbai South liveable, regardless of her election defeat. I had experience of the previous efforts of the Mumbai Docklands Regeneration Forum where about 6 of us lobbied to stop the MbPT’s offshore container terminal. I knew that any letters we wrote or presentations we made just remained on the record but didn’t carry any weight. However, letters we received from the authorities and cited in our petitions made a difference. Getting the authorities to reply to our letters is possible only through the RTI Act (2005) So I set about my task in earnest. I sent similar applications both to the Port trust and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board, asking for documents. I asked for copies of applications from MbPT for environmental clearance, their Consent Orders, and compliance reports. Each round of queries and answers took one month. We collected substantial information by August 2014. We found that middle level officers have no inclination to protect their institutions, their superiors or their colleagues. They are aware of the downside if they are accused by activists in appeal, that they did not provide information known to exist in the files in their Department. In the case of coal handling at MbPT an additional source of information was their web site which is updated daily with quantities received and despatched. The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) web site provides minutes of meetings and status of Consent Orders etc.
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One lucky break we got in the bunch of replies from MbPT was that we received a complete set of complaints from local Sewri residents objecting to coal dust pollution. The Koli Samaj had been active since 2009. There were complaints from a sitting MLA, businesses and even Public Sector Oil Companies, managers of oil depots adjacent to the coal plots. There was a letter from a medical supplier’s warehouse lamenting damage to pharmaceuticals. There was also a touching letter from Hemlata Kharvi pleading fervently for stopping coal dust from ruining her home in Reay Road (East), which is reproduced below, with the subject line “Hope this complaint will be read…
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These complaints had responses from both MPCB and MbPT which followed a set pattern. MPCB would write to MbPT to enforce dust control measures. MbPT would write strongly worded letters to their contractors to spray water, to cover all the dumpers with tarpaulin, and sweep the roads. The Contractors would make a show of compliance for a few days and then do nothing of the sort. The Complainant had to gather fresh evidence and resubmit the complaint. In this cycle of letter writing several weeks would elapse and linking up references would become impossible. Lay citizens had limited resources to visit the errant sites and produce authenticated records giving precise locations, dates and times. These would be treated as fresh complaints and the cycle would start again, months later. We received through RTI a copy of a letter from the Chief Engineer of MbPT writing to his own colleagues about the poor handling of coal, spillage, slush on the road, and dust. Even this had no effect on the Traffic Department or the Shippers. In just one case the MPCB went as far as to issue a “Show Cause Notice” to MbPT as to why action should not be taken against them. This Notice too lapsed due to sheer delay, with no meaningful follow up. Without recourse to the administrators, the Koli Samaj lodged complaints with the local police against the truckers regarding rash driving and once agitated with a ‘rasta roko’ blockade confiscating fake driving licenses too.
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Coal destroying mangroves at Sewri
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The Consent Order had a Schedule II with six conditions specifically intended to eliminate coal dust pollution. These were outmoded and impractical ideas, like water sprinkling, dust extraction by sweeping of roads, and ‘no nuisance to the surrounding area’ etc. None of these conditions showed that MPCB or MbPT had any clue of modern grab or screw type barge unloaders, enclosed belt conveyors, stackers, reclaimers, etc in common use all over the world. The stipulation that monitoring reports should be submitted to the Regional Officer of MPCB was ignored totally. This was admitted by MPCB in their reply to my query under the RTI Act. MbPT officers were aware that modern dustless coal handling facilities were in use at the Tata Electric Power Station at Trombay 10 km away, but were unwilling to consider similar capital investment due to their low throughput. MPCB were oblivious of the nature of the cargo or of any dry bulk material handling technology.
Coal stacker reclaimer environment friendly without spillage
Coal unloading, stacking and reclaiming equipment used internationally
Some of the air quality information we received from MPCB and MbPT was wrong and worse than useless. We got two years worth of records of air quality measurement monitored monthly by MbPT. This official record showed suspended particulate matter SPM-10 and SPM-2.5 as being entirely within limits, of 60 micro grams per cu m for SPM- 2.5 and 100 micro grams for SPM-10. ( These are better than limits imposed in California) Fortunately, we got one record of a survey by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) which showed the air quality in Parel 1km from Sewri as “Critical” at 202 micro grams per cu m. We consoled ourselves with the Economic Times on 14 Oct 2014 reproduced below
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Why India’s numbers on air quality can’t be trusted M Rajshekhar, ET Bureau Oct 14, 2014, 05.32AM IST
(The air you breathe is probably…) A survey this May by the World Health Organisation ranked Delhi as the world’s most polluted city, under assault from its growing vehicle population, rising emissions from coal based thermal power plants and the surrounding areas. The outcome: according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), which oversees pollution control in India, 43.5 per cent of children in the Capital have reduced lung function and breathing problems. It could be, it probably is, worse as the WHO findings are largely based on official numbers. And India’s air-quality numbers, in how they are measured, are a pretence in the name of protecting citizens. An illustration of this is India’s experience in measuring PM 2.5: airborne particles less than 2.5 microns in size. Small enough to penetrate deep into our lungs and bloodstreams, they have been connected to lung cancer and heart attacks. Studies show there is no safe level of PM 2.5, though CPCB terms as “safe” readings up to 60 ig/m3. On October 12, a Sunday, between 3 pm and 4 pm, ITO in New Delhi had a PM 2.5 reading of 206. In 2009, the ministry of environment and CPCB directed state governments to track PM 2.5. What happened next is one reason why India’s air-quality data cannot be trusted. Race To The Bottom 14
In 2009, hardly any companies manufactured PM 2.5 instruments in India. Called ‘high-volume samplers’, these suck in a fixed quantity of air and eliminate all but the 2.5 particles. “Till 2009, we used to sell about 10-30 instruments a year, mostly to research organisations,” says Rakesh Agarwal, managing director of Envirotech, one of the first companies in this space in India. That changed with the PM 2.5 directive. As a market for 2.5 samplers emerged, new companies, mostly started by ex-employees of companies like Envirotech, came up. Price warfare began. In 2009, Agarwal says, the price of a good instrument was Rs 1.5 lakh, the best ones cost Rs. 2-2.5 lakh. By 2010 itself, “the price fell to Rs 60,000,” says a former CPCB official who now runs his own environmental consultancy and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Some of the newer companies do not even have a production facility,” adds Rajkumar Singh, AGM (marketing, environment) at Spectro Lab Equipments, an Okhla-based company which makes samplers. “They go to lathe makers, give them the specs and ask them to make these machines.” Although the government mandates companies to adhere to specifications defined by the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA), India doesn’t have standards of its own, it doesn’t check if these samplers measure what they claim to. Manufacturers self-certify. Managers at two such companies told ET that they match quality but work on lower margins. Counters Agarwal, the raw material cost alone of such an instrument is 40-50 per cent of its price. Another 10-15 per cent would be labour cost, with the rest going to administrative expenses and margins. He cites a check the CPCB undertook about two and-a-half years ago, when it compared some India-made PM 2.5 samplers with international ones. “There was a 100 per cent difference in readings,” says Agarwal. Some were leaking air from the sides, others were letting in lesser air than stipulated. “If I expect the air input to be 20 litres per minute, but get just 16 litres, my PM 2.5 count will be lower.” “When a machine says it is capturing PM 2.5, we are not sure whether it is really doing that,” says KM George, a senior scientist at the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC). In the absence of certification, companies cannot be eliminated on technical grounds. “All we have is a financial bid where we have to choose on the basis of L1 (lowest bid),” says George. The perils of this approach were seen some years ago when DPCC called a tender for PM 10 and PM 2.5 machines. “The bids started from Rs 50,000,” says George. “Finding the numbers unworkable, they were below material cost, we scrapped the first tender. We re-tendered twice, got similarly low bids, and eventually scrapped all three.” Acting CPCB chairman Susheel Kumar, also an additional secretary at the environment ministry, declined comment, the CPCB has not had a full-time chairperson for some years now. Member secretary AB Akolkar did not respond either. Data Manipulation The patterns seen in PM 2.5, of cut-throat competition and non-existent certification, resulting in companies cutting corners, are also at play in the other two technologies used to measure air quality: ‘wet chemistry’ and, more recently, higher end, imported ‘continuous monitoring (CM) units’.
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In all this there was no mention of the fact that coal should never be stored near petroleum installations.
Modistone coal plots adjacent to HPCL installation at Hay Bunder On 27 Nov 2014 there was indeed a fire at Reay Rd (E). I could take a photo of it myself as I was taking a group of students from Columbia University , New York who were in Mumbai for the IMC-APLI – Columbia University Studio X PortLands Conference on 29 November
People At Risk
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Infrastructure Damage
On 4 July 2014 we learnt from a public notice on the MbPT web site that the new Government had constituted the “Mumbai Port Land Development committee” (MPLDC) to prepare a road map of the development of Mumbai Port Trust’s water front and Port Lands. The committee was headed by a former chairperson of MbPT Mrs Rani Jadhav, I.A.S. (Retd). Hindustan Times gave this notice valuable publicity on successive days and included comments from leading citizens welcoming the move, including Mr Shirish Patel, the doyen of urban planners in Mumbai, Mr DM Sukthankar, former Chief Secretary of Government of Maharashtra and Meera Sanyal. We recognised that this was a great opportunity to wean the MbPT away from coal handling, ship breaking and mis-managing their land resources, and thus benefit the city. Many such committees had been announced from 2002 onwards but had failed to even meet, leave alone produce a report. The public notice of 4 July 2014 gave a deadline of 28 July for suggestions from citizens. 24 days were given to solve this intractable problem going back to 1920s. So we needed urgently a few urban planners and architects to articulate our ideas and submit them to Mrs Rani Jadhav and her committee whose members were yet to be named. At this juncture, Meera Sanyal’s high profile background and wide acceptability came to our rescue. She used to receive daily several invitations to, and intimations of, events all over the city. One such event which caught our attention was a planning workshop on 18 Jul 14 organised by India Culture Lab a think tank sponsored by the Godrej family group at their industrial estate in Vikhroli. Meera and I attended, and at tea break I suggested that she pitch for volunteers. Meera has always been good at this. There was a buzz immediately but the best suggestion of all came from Rajiv Thakker who runs Studio X on DN Road near the CST Rail terminus. Studio X is one of the global centres of the Graduate School of Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) of Columbia Univ in New York. Rajiv suggested that we meet the next day, a Saturday, at Studio X where Prathima Manohar of “the urban vision” had organised a ‘hackathon’. She is the founder of this young urban planning practice engaged in place making. We jumped at the idea and joined one of the six sub groups next day tasked with re-imagining and designing ways to use two public spaces, a car park at Powai and one at Borivali. There were about 30 hackathoners who worked the whole day and produced 6 workable designs. At the end of the day I announced that we could offer 1000 acres of PortLands to be re-imagined and presented to the Rani Jadhav Committee. All those interested, I said, should gather at Platform no.1 of the suburban rail at CST at 08.30 on the morrow, a Sunday. Ten turned up, all architects, and some with post graduate degrees in urban planning led by Mansi Sahu, Sarfaraz Momin, Mahesh Waghdare, founders of Studiopod, another young urban planning practice, Aditi Pathak of the urban vision. Meera Sanyal, Helen Hiranandani, Girish Bhaskar and I formed the host team. We took the train to Wadala, 10km, 7 stations and 20 minutes away. En route I showed the group vacant railway yards at Carnac Bunder and Wadi Bunder, empty cotton godowns at Cotton Green, derelict warehouses without roofs, and the sprawl of sheds of the Food Corporation of India at Reay Road. On the return journey we alighted at Reay Road and went by taxi to the coal dumps 1 km away. In the group there were urban planners and architects trained at Urbana Champaign, Columbia University, NewCastle and JJ School, who had been working in Mumbai on Mumbai. Yet, they had no idea of the Port and were devastated by the sight and proximity of coal mountains towering over them inside the heart of their own city. They were shocked enough to join Meera’s team on the spot. A few days later we met in a Studio called HIVE at Bandra. Every one declared their commitment but no work got done. The Eastern waterfront of interest stretches from Wadala to Colaba, We divided it into 12 neighbourhoods of Sewri Fort, New Nadkarni Park, Cotton Green, Hajee Bunder, Lakdi Bunder, Darukhana, Princes Dock, Victoria Dock, Elphinstone Estate, OCT Jetty, Sassoon Dock and Vikrant museum at Oyster rock.
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When we met at Matunga at the Studiopod office the following week, we had a core team of urban planners, Mansi, Sarfaraz, Mahesh, Prathima and Aditi to give form and substance to our ideas. Sarfaraz produced attractive maps for each neighbourhood. We were brainstorming for a name for our group. I wanted one Marathi word in it, like Amchi. Aditi came up with Apli which Meera immediately converted to “A Port Lands Initiative” and every one clapped! It has stuck with us ever since with the logo
We were too close to the deadline even after it was extended by 10 days, to 8 Aug. We had to do it in an ‘all nighter’ working from our homes. I wrote the text, Meera edited it and the APLI team selected photos and formatted the pages. The following pages have what the group produced to replace the coal dumps :
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It had other superb maps and telling photographs by Girish Bhaskar on what the coal mountains looked like and why they should be moved out to make way for vocational training institutes, open spaces, and sports facilities for citizens of Mumbai. To take this thread further, the Rani Jadhav committee report was submitted in Nov 2014 recommending, inter alia, cessation of coal handling in Mumbai. The Ministry of Shipping has refused to consider the report at all. I obtained a copy after 6 months of “RTI”ing with multiple agencies and appealing to the CIC, Chief Information Commissioner in Delhi. Meera and I also sent an open appeal to Nitin Gadkari endorsed by former Chief Secreatry, Mr DM Sukthankar, Urban planner Shirish Patel and a former Secretary Shipping Mr Michael Pinto. It is still “under consideration” by Nitin Gadkari. To complete the narrative of this thread, the CIC conducted a video conference from Delhi with me in Mumbai, in Aug 2016 enquiring why the Rani Jadhav report had not been made public. The ill briefed representative from the Mumbai Port Trust bore the brunt of the questioning, whereas the Ministry of Shipping, the culprits, were absent. There has been no answer till now, and APLI Mumbai will probably be able to get it on the agenda only through another PIL. Reverting to our tussle with the MPCB, one more crucial fact we discovered was that the “Consent to Operate” Order issued to MbPT by MPCB on 14 October 2013 was due to expire on 30 September 2014. This spurred our resolve to file a Public Interest Litigation to stall renewal of the Consent Order. Meera Sanyal’s high standing in the Aam Admi Party led us to speak to Mr Kusumakar Kaushik a shrewd and experienced advocate in the Bombay High Court. He could marshal the facts superbly and produced very quickly and in his own wording, a succinct and telling petition. We filed it on 5 September 2014. With good luck, and good management by Kaushik, it was heard by the Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice Sonak on 25 Sep before any approval of the extention of the prevailing Consent to Operate, which would expire on 30 Sep 2014.The first hurdle in such petitions is that the HC could refer it to the newly formed National Green Tribunal (NGT) bench at Pune. For us it would have been a setback to appear at Pune and deal strictly within the confines of the environmental laws. At the High Court, the Chief Justice took a broader view which we advocated and simply asked the MPCB to consider our petition as a representation and deal with it. This in effect meant that MPCB would have to take a decision only after giving us a hearing. The Court also said “..,. it will be open to the petitioners to move this court again, if and when required”. The petition was thus disposed of on 25 September 2014.
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We thought that considering the expiry of the current Consent Order on 30 September, i.e. in 5 days time, there would be a flurry of activity. Firstly, MbPT asked for extension of the two weeks time they were given to file their reply, to ensure that our statements did not go unchallenged. We started talking to the Legal Department of MPCB who showed some respect for the HC Order, but nobody else in MPCB seemed to care. We wrote increasingly strident letters. We visited MPCB HQ at Sion, and for the record, I always entered my name in the visitors book. We used to ask to meet Dr Anbalagan, the Member Secretary of the Board, and in his absence Mr P Mirashe, the Asst Secy (Tech). As we were informed repeatedly that both were at Mantralaya, in South Mumbai, we used to meet Mr Purkar, their legal officer who looked grave enough, but could not provide any answers. To attract more attention to this urgent issue we organised a picnic in Oct 2014, at the unusable football ground at Hay Bunder, opposite the coal dumps at Modistone plots.
Residents of Sewri Koli Samaj, Makani Chambers ar Reay Rd East and supporters of our movement including the journalist Mrs Bachi Karkaria came to the picnic which gave a boost to news items in Mumbai Mirror and Marathi news papers.
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On 5 November MbPT filed a reply to our petition, more for the record than for argument. It was easy for us to file a point by point rebuttal which we submitted on 15 December with a further pressing request for a hearing by MPCB. This may have finally alerted MPCB as we received intimation of a meeting at 36 hours notice on 19 Dec, when Meera was in Delhi and I in Bengaluru. So we asked for a fresh date, and the hearing finally happened only after more reminders on 11 February 2015, five months after the High Court Order.. MPCB used to have a politician as the Chairman and various Secretary level Government servants as exofficio members, who had their own State wide departments to administer. So if they attended at all, they could only rubber stamp their approvals at meetings. Nowadays the Principal Secretary of the Environment Dept is the Chairman, and an officer from the I.A.S. cadre is the Member Secretary, and de-facto chief executive of the organisation. This post had been vacant for months in 2014. The hearing on 11 February was to be conducted by the newly appointed Member Secretary Dr Anbalagan, assisted by Mr Mirashe, Asst Secy (Tech), and a Principal Scientific Officer. The Port Trust fielded the Dy Conservator who is head of the Marine Dept, the Traffic Manager, earlier known as the Docks Manager, in charge of all cargo handling, and his Deputy, the Sr Dy T.M. for Business Development. Our team consisted of Meera Sanyal, myself, our advocate Mr Kusumakar Kaushik, and Girish Bhaskar, our video maker and photo enthusiast. We had also asked two each from Koli Samaj and Makani Chambers to attend, so that we could stress that real people were affected by coal dust pollution. We started by screening a video by Girish showing Meera moving through the coal dumps. Then I presented 12 slides showing extract of Schedule II of the Consent Order of 2013 and violations by MbPT of its terms and conditions. Koli Samaj followed with their mention of dead fish and coal dust killing mangroves. Hemlata gave a graphic description of coal dust inside their homes and of TB affecting her brother-in-law. The Port Trust responded weakly that they were trying to control dust by water spray. During the toilet break they conceded to us that they were defending the indefensible. The questions asked by MPCB senior officers showed their ignorance of coal cargo and its handling. They thought this was pulverised coal powder (which is unthinkable except immediately before feeding to a boiler). They thought coal could be unloaded using vacuum systems. They thought that city road sweepers could manually clean out the mass coal spillage, which was at least a hundred tonnes per day. They had never seen coal being unloaded, though Hajee Bunder is 4 km from their Head Office. They wanted short term and long term measures to be listed.
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MbPT as expected tried to buy time to respond. We reacted that MbPT had five years since 2010 to rectify the lacunae. Therefore giving them 3 weeks or 3 months to submit fresh proposals with diplomatic verbiage made no sense. Dr Anbalagan retorted that Government could not take hasty decisions, and MbPT should be given a chance! Meera Sanyal then made her emphatic statement accusing MPCB of failing in their duty to the citizens of Mumbai. One point we made forcefully was that a site visit would make the situation crystal clear and should be a priority. The following day I submitted to MPCB our draft of the record of discussions to enable them to issue the minutes. We added a request for a site visit. Once again there was silence from MPCB despite phone calls, visits and letters. So I decided to do what Government servants call “raise the level�. I knocked on the doors of the Principal Secretary Environment, Government of Maharashtra, Mr Ajoy Mehta. He said let us wait for the site visit report. The site visit was scheduled eventually 2 months after the hearing, for 14 April. We immediately circulated a Google Map showing the spots to be visited tracing the entire sequence of operations, to ensure the MPCB team saw unloading from barges to jetty, reloading from jetty to dumper, dumping in the coal plots 1 km away, stacking into mountainous heaps of upto 2 lakh tonnes using pay loaders, and again repeating the process at the railway yards.
Google Map showing the spots to be visited tracing the entire sequence of operations
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Mr Mirashe led the MPCB team assisted by a Principal Scientific Officer and Mr Durgule the Sub-regional officer directly responsible for compliance by Port authorities. The Traffic Manager led the MbPT team but we encountered vociferous reps of Mercator Shipping at each location. Mr Durgule, the sub regional officer of MPCB in whose jurisdiction the coal was being mis-handled wondered what the fuss was all about and tried to cajole us into accepting the inevitable. At Hajee Bunder we were fortunate that a coal ship was in harbour discharging coal, and a barge was alongside with excavators in action. As this was an official visit we could take photographs freely which Girish did superbly. My remonstrance to Mr Mirashe that using excavators to pick the coal from barges and chucking it on to the jetty was anathema to any self respecting operator, was countered by Mercator rep who pointed to a lone water spray jet in a one acre plot, dealing with 1 % of the dust rising out of each chucking action. Underfoot there was a mixture of coal powder, mud and water forming an unholy slush which made the experience unforgettable. We then moved next door to the Marine Engineering Research Institute, a college for budding seafarers, age 18 to 24. Mr Neti, head of faculty, showed Mr Mirashe how the electronic components in their machinery control simulators imported from Japan had malfunctioned, despite being sealed. The terrace of MERI gave a birds eye view of the devastation of tree cover of the whole area and how the juxtaposition of the HPCL petroleum depot next to coal dumps, presented a lethal combination. We went next to the cadet’s hostel accommodating 200 trainees. In their dorm. Mr Mirashe helped our cause by asking the overhead fan to be stopped. That gave us a critical photo op to snap the whole team staring up at blackened fan blades above the young people’s beds. At the Modistone plots where over a lakh tons were stacked, 5 stories high on that day, the sorry spectacle was clear for everybody to see. The two railway yards we visited next displayed the crudity of the handling methods. The explanations of MbPT officials and vain attempts by Mercator Reps cut no ice. The following day, I sent a detailed email to Mr Mirashe describing the site visit and attaching the telling photographs. We expected that Mr Mirashe would be shamed into recording a simple short report that MbPT were not observing the required conditions.
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Coal pollution due to spillage from excavator buckets and trucks
Pollution due to coal dust settled on ceiling fans providing irrefutable evidence
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Pollution due to multiple handling at stackyards and railway sidings
We waited one month, and then two months for a report of both the hearing of 11 Feb and the site visit of 14 April. After we wrote letters to the new Principal Secretary at Mantralaya, I was waiting in the outer office of the incumbent, Mr Sitaram Kunte when there was an unusual buzz. When I entered his room I learnt that he had been transferred as Finance Secretary after only a few weeks as the Environment Secy. So I hastily pleaded with him to endorse my letter to MPCB to act on the very basic request of minutes of a meeting, and a site visit report overdue by months. This he did and I diligently obtained the “diary number” to be able to continue pointedly haranguing the MPCB. We waited for the next Environment Secretary to be appointed, our third since April, 2015, Mrs Malini Shankar. On my first encounter in the outer corridor, she said that she had not yet taken over due to pending work in her previous assignment. She asked me to come the following week. Then she insisted on an appointment scheduled in advance. On the third occasion she said she was unwell and did not know how long she would remain in the post. In exasperation, I walked up to the office of the Minister for Environment, Ramdas Kadam a hard core appointee of the Shiv Sena. His staff advised a covering letter in Marathi. As soon as we complied, it got Ronak Mastakar and me a hearing. We first showed him the horrendous photos. He asked ‘when were they taken’. If they were from 2014, he was not responsible. However, he marked our letter for an immediate report from the Pr Secy. We never saw any action from his office, though it gave us a good photo-op.
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Members of Koli Samaj, Ronak and I with Mr Ramdas Kadam, Minister for Environment
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In May 2015, Meera referred a Times of India journalist to me, Anahita Mukherjee, who had covered her Lok Sabha election campaign in 2009 and 2014. Our coal story had received publicity in at least 4 Dailies in 2014 but not Times of India. I had sent leads to Nauzer Bharucha, but when nothing appeared in print, we came to the conclusion that Times of India was a lease holder from MbPT and would not write against them. We were proved wrong when Anahita came out with her first story on 23 May 2015. She quoted Meera and myself expressing shock at the inaction by MPCB in the face of damning evidence. I took her over to meet various stake holders, MERI students, Makani Chambers housewives and Koli Samaj Society residents at Sewri. She had decoded early on that she would get 10 stories out of this material. She is a skilled reporter and paced her stories step by step, weaving them into as many as 20 articles over the next 5 months. She never failed to quote Meera and myself on each aspect of coal handling facilities, health hazards, MbPT ineptitude, MPCB’s callousness, MERI students suffering at the start of their merchant navy careers which require total medical fitness and a robust constitution, and dead fish caught by the Kolis. She brought other NGO’s views too. The articles became talking points with our friends but we could not see any effect on the authorities.
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Anahita would always try and get reaction from the “other side” before writing, every time. I helped her with organisation trees, names, web sites navigation, including closely guarded mobile phone numbers, of MPCB and MBPT. She could get brazen access which was available to us only through the RTI process with a cycle of one month between query and reply. When we were pressing unsuccessfully for a report of the joint site visit of 14 April, she managed to corner Dr Anbalagan into telling Mr Mirashe to part with it. Regrettably, it was unsigned and undated and Anahita would not use it. She had her professional standards. ( we got it eventually under RTI Act a full 2 months later). Anahita would not include in her stories any comment from us which could be labelled as conjecture, speculation or guess work, however strong the circumstantial evidence we relied on. We were convinced that love of Sewri for coal handling by the shippers was because of the ease of pilferage. We had oral reports from workers and MbPT officials, but no hard evidence. This would explain the tenacity with which agencies were clinging to coal handling and ease with which they got approvals. But this story never found it past the ethics committee. The real coup Anahita got was the information that on 1 August 2015, MPCB had issued a Consent to Operate for Coal in continuation of the Consent Order, which had expired nearly a year earlier on 30 September 2014. It flew in the face of all the evidence we had highlighted at the hearing and the site visit, and the Court Order of 25 September 2014 itself. This was not on their web site, which had only the Consent Order for “non coal” cargo operations. Anahita rushed the story to the press that MPCB had done it without informing the petitioners in the law suit. Within MPCB too there are factions and pressure groups. One group wants to enforce norms, while the other group is induced to facilitate “growth”. In this case one group pushed through issue of a Consent Order, while the other group imposed impossible conditions hidden in Schedule II.
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Condition no.2 stated “Industry shall provide shed to cover the coal stackyard”. Considering that coal stacks of 200,000 Tons are mountains 10m high and spread over 19 acres, this condition is ludicrous and unimplementable. It has no precedents anywhere in the world. Condition No.9 stated “Industry shall submit proposal including an undertaking towards development of mechanical closed coal handling terminal facility by adopting environmental sound management system with time bound commitment within a month”. This badly worded clause suited our purpose just like clause 2. We did not know this at the time but the officers in MbPT who were in favour of ceasing coal handling won the day. They got a resolution passed at the meeting of the Board of Trustees and a public notice was issued on 4 September saying “It has been decided that handling of coal at Hajee Bunder will be discontinued w.e.f. 31 October 2015. The vessels… shall be permitted till 24 September 2015 only and …. Coal is cleared before 30 October 2015.” This was the best outcome anyone could expect!
We declared victory and posted it widely on Twitter and Facebook. Anahita published it in the T of I. On 21 September, we showed our perspicacity by writing a letter to the Chairman MbPT welcoming the Notice but mentioning “in case any challenge thereto is raised by any party… we assure you of our support…”
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This challenge was not long in coming. On 29 September Mr Ramdas Kadam, Minister of Environment, Government of Maharashtra held a meeting attended by MPCB, Mahagenco, and MbPT. The sole intention was to pressurise MbPT to continue coal handling at Hajee Bunder. We learnt of this meeting through an informer who we can refer to only as ‘deep throat’ like Bob Woodward did in their investigative reporting on Nixon’s Watergate scandal. We immediately launched our counter attack. We filed our application under RTI Act for copies of the minutes of the meeting. With even greater speed, Meera devised an on line petition through change.org. This was addressed to the Chief Minister D Fadnavis to prevent restarting of coal. The whole team spread it furiously on twitter and facebook including APLI Mumbai. It was an attractive petition with visual appeal as well as serious content. In the first week we got a thousand signatures. Meera has 67000 followers on twitter. Some of us have over a hundred. The number of signatures increased in spurts every time there was an initiative from our side. The petition was designed to send a copy to the CM’s office every time a new signature was added. But my enquiries at the CM’s office could not find evidence that this actually happened. So I posted the petition on the CMs grievance web site, “Aple Sarkar” an IT minefield. That too got forwarded to the Ministry of Environment. Our next step was to take hard copies printed in full colour to the offices of Chief Minister, Ministry of Environment, Principal Secretary Environment and Chairman MbPT. We got news of a meeting of the Trustees of the Port. We got the Koli Samaj and Makani group to picket the office and handed over the petitions to each trustee as they alighted from their cars for the meeting. This was possible thanks to the pre-world war open street architecture in Ballard Estate where there are no compound walls and gates. (See Kamu Iyer’s book, Bombay). Meera updated the petition whenever there was significant development, and this she continued till January 2016.
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We tend to be restrained when we draft letters to Government officials. Lawyers have no such compunction. Hence Mr Kaushik issued this scathing legal notice which would caution even the most hardened bureaucrat.
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This was followed 4 weeks later by an even more stinging notice which I called the “stay your hands off� notice. Banishing Coal from Sewri 39
While we were trying to extract a date for a meeting with Environment Minister Mr Ramdas Kadam, we explored other avenues. We found that the Chief Secretary sees visitors every day from 2.30 to 3.00pm.The
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drill is that anybody in his waiting room at 2.30 will get a hearing. We found that not more than a dozen people availed of this splendid opportunity. Mr Swadheen Kshatriya was the personification of grace and courtesy at these meetings with equal deference to all comers. Some came from as far as Parbhani. Ronak and I explained our predicament that a perfectly good public notice by MbPT was sought to be overturned. When we told the Chief Secretary that the Pr Secy Env was being forced to relax the norms, he said “we bureaucrats are used to withstanding pressure. We have to do it throughout our careers. I have known Malini Shankar for 30 years. She will not succumb”. We said it was wonderful to hear that and we left. Our next attempt was to meet the Chief Minister, Mr Devendra Phadnavis. In the CM’s office there is one clerk only to look after his appointments. From him we found out which days the CM would be in town, free from meetings or major events. Here my former Naval rank on my visiting card, and grey hair helped. The clerk doesn’t feel threatened that he will be pulled up by his bosses. Next we kept in phone contact with this key person through a week of uncertain information. One day we were asked to show up in a large waiting room. There were about 30 people.
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Our delegation of 10 included my wife Shaku, thrilled to be part of this lark, Prabhakar Koli with 3 others from Koli Samaj, and 4 from Makani Chambers with Hemlata Kharvi who had become a regular at these ventures. She and her husband Ravi have an advertising business at Crawford market and are their own bosses. While we were wondering how we would get a hearing in this crowded atmosphere, there was a noticeable buzz in this large waiting room. A table and chair was placed at the head of the room and we were told that the CM would come to meet us rather than we being called into his chamber in relay fashion. When he entered the room, a bit of stage fright grips the first timers. This cleared the room for me to step forward. I spoke about the Port stopping coal at Sewri, 6km from Matralaya, but the Government of Maharashtra wanted to revive it. “Do you have a paper I can write on” the CM asked. I pulled out the letter I had handy from PNP Port of Dharamtar, addressed to the Addl Ch Secy (Trpt) Gautam Chatterjee. I preferred this to the change.org petition with Meera Sanyal’s photo which made it political. The CM wrote something on the letter which we could not see, but presumably it would have reached Addl Ch Secy Gautam Chatterjee. Prabhakar Koli, a shrewd manoeuvrer had reached the spot behind me and immediately started his spiel about dead fish caught in Sewri creek and damaged mangroves. The rest of the team were left standing in the melee. Having achieved our aim we retired to the canteen for a treat of Kothmir wadis and masala chai. All Government offices have a canteen subsided by the tax payer which one should not skip. On one such foray, still trying to meet Mr Kadam, our team waited outside the office of Pr Secy Env, Malini Shankar. We had no appointment and her office staff continued to dissuade us from waiting. However, the presence of a group of eight, with women in the majority, must have made an impression on Malini Shankar. We also had with us Sonali Kumar who is to us what Gul Panag is to Punjab. So she called us in. I spoke just one sentence. “ MPCB is issuing Consent to operate coal but the MbPT wants the conditions relaxed”. When Malini Shankar started to speak, Hemlata said “we are all suffering badly from coal for so many years”. At this Malini Shankar, the I.A.S. officer, froze and said if you want to talk, I have nothing to say”. I had to jump into a rescue act. I said that these people are actual sufferers. They have come to Mantralaya for the first time, they are excited and honoured to be given a hearing. This mollified Malini Shankar, who we discovered had been elevated to Addl Ch Secy (Env). We said Madam, we do not want the terms to be relaxed” She said “No. we won’t do it”. This was the cue for us to leave but not before we took a snapshot of the scene. Post mortem about the incident continued for the next hour in our group which had adjourned to our next meeting at the Urban Development Committee of the Indian Merchants Chamber. Chips Kamath, our most perceptive and sensitive member was aghast at such petulance. At last, we succeeded in using the same tactic to meet the Env Minister, Ramdas Kadam, this time with the T of I reporter Anahita in tow, because she had failed to meet him after months of trying. While we were gathered in the large air conditioned waiting area, I asked his staff to let us wait in his conference room. We found that in the newly refurbished swanky office following the disastrous fire in Mantralaya in 2013, Kadam’s office had only a glass partition between his office and the conference table. Having ensconced ourselves there, we were guaranteed a meeting when he returned to his office. Kadam came directly to the head of the table. When he heard our plaint, he launched immediately on a tirade against the Minister for Energy, from the coalition partner, for having dragged him into the controversy reported in the T of I that he had asked the Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari at the centre to permit coal handling in Mumbai for a further 3 months. Kadam swore that he had not spoken to Gadkari. Anahita stood up for the T of I reporter Manthan Mehta who she said had attended the Press conference of Gadkari. At this Kadam asked her why she did not speak in Marathi. She said Mumbai is part of India. She is Bengali and why does nobody speak Bengali. This was indeed getting out of hand.
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I changed the subject to suggesting that the Minister visit the site of coal dumping in Sewri. He readily agreed that he would do so after Dussehra, only four days away. Traditionally, Dussehra is the occasion for the head of the Shiv Sena, from Bal Thackeray’s time, to deliver his annual address at the rally in Shivaji Park. Kadam was at pains to explain to Prabhakar Koli that he would only visit after Dussehra, and not to expect him earlier. He was confident that he would find solutions to meet the environmental conditions and yet continue coal operations. ( at his earlier meeting with Mahagenco, MPCB and MbPT on 28 Sep, he had engineered to table a report from a pliant Regional Officer that the coal handling was being done well, meeting all conditions as best as possible). We left with his assurance of a site visit. Nothing has been heard from his office ever since. Our last foray at engaging politicians was a similar meeting with the Minister for Energy. He lost no time in accusing our group of being agents of the Peasant and Workers Party Chief Jayant Patil, helping him to grab the coal business for his own Dharamtar Port. We beat a hasty retreat after swearing denials. We did not return to mantralaya thereafter on the coal issue. One never knows if our efforts had any effect on the politicians or senior bureaucrats. They obviously have some inner strength which propels them into positions of enormous power for public service, or equally private gain. I usually explain to myself that as activists, we are in the 1% game. If 1% of our total efforts produce some tangible result, we should consider ourselves lucky. ( Marketing professionals in India consider 1 in 30 as success) The news in October from MbPT and MPCB was very discouraging. On 15 Oct , we received through RTI and the MPCB web site a letter written by MbPT on 8 Oct, requesting again for reconsideration of the two sticky terms and conditions, in particular, Conditions 2 and 9 of Schedule II of the Consent. We downloaded the minutes of the Consent Appraisal Committee (CAC) held the next day, 9 Oct. This showed a “Tabled Item” on coal not in the published agenda. The CAC had decided to extend the consent by two years till 31 Oct 2017. With suspicious alacrity, MPCB sent a copy of the minutes of the CAC to MbPT on the same day, 9 Oct, assuring them that the Consent order would follow. The twist was that the condition no.2 had been made more stringent by stating that no coal should be handled till the covered shed was in place. This meant that our declaration of victory at the issue of the MbPT Notice of 4 Sep was premature. We reviewed the chronology, which would dishearten the most cockeyed optimist. Chronology Sep 2014 to Oct 2015 25-Sep-15 30-Sep-14 15-Dec-14 11-Feb-15 10-Apr-15 06-May-15 07-Jul-15 01-Aug-15
HC Order on PIL/111/2014 Consent to operate for coal issued with validity upto 30Sep 2014 expires but mbPT continues to operate coal. No objection raised by MPCB Reminder to MPCB to schedule Hearing as directed in HC Order Hearing by MPCB attended by petitioners, counsel and MbPT. Minutes issued only on 19 Sep 2015 as a result of repeated reminders and finally after application under RTI act dated 12- 08-2015. Site visit by AS(T) and R.O MPCB with petitioners and MbPT Reminder for minutes of hearing and site vist. Visit Report issued only on 19 Sep 2015 as a result of repeated reminders and finally after application under RTI act dated 12-08-2015. copy of internal report on site visit obtained by reporter Consent to operate for coal issued with validity upto 31 Oct 2015 but commencing back dated to 30 Sep 2014
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04-Sep-15 08-Sep-15 14-Sep-15 15-Sep-15 21-Sep-15 19-Sep-15 30-Sep-15 05-Oct-15 08-Oct-15 09-Oct-15 09-Oct-15 09-Oct-15 12-Oct-15 12-Oct-15 16-Oct-15 17-Oct-15 20-Oct-15 20-Oct-15 20-Oct-15 23-Oct-15
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Public Notice by MbPT terminating coal inports by 24 Sep and clearing of coal plots by 31 Oct 2015 Letter from MSTC stating they have contract for coal supply to Bhusaval and Nashik but with alternate ports as Dharamtar and Dahej and that coal handling should not be discontinued Site visit by petitioner no.2. photographs reveal failures by MbPT to meet terms and conditions of Consent Order Letter from Mahagenco to GOM stating extra cost of Rs 100 cr for shifting to Dharamtar Letter from Mercator Shipping agents stating that they are taking measures to meet environmental norms Received info under RTI from MPCB with minuted of meetings and site visit report Minister of Environment holds meeting with Pr Secy Env, MPCB,and MbPT and issues directions to relax norms. Minutes in Marathi received 19 Oct thru RTI Appln dated 1.10.2015. Rough Translation forwarded 26 Oct by email. Minutes unhelpful and in any case superseded by meeting of CAC of MPCB on 9 Oct 2015. Lawyers notice delivered to MPCB, MbPT, cc Min of Env and Pr Secy Env to withdraw Consent to operate and stay hands off from extending Consent to Operate MbPT writes to MPCB that they will handle coaltill Oct 2017 if terms and conditions are relaxed Consent Appraisal Committee (CAC) of MPCB holds meeting. Coal discussed though not on agenda MPCB writes to MbPT that their request was considered by CAC and fresh Consent will be forwarded Representation made by Petitioner No.2 to Chief Secy in person to uphold Public Notice a nd not to “succumb to pressures” Representation made by petitioner no.2 in person to Hon’ble Chief Minister to deny restarting of coal handling inside Mumbai Representation made to Addl Ch Secy (T) in person to move coal to Dharamtar Personal representation to Chief Secretary and submission of copies of mbPT Public Notice to be upheld with a request for MPCB not to succumb to pressure to relax norms Personal representation to Asst Secretary (T) MPCB and submission of copies of T of I report of with a request for MPCB not to succumb to pressure to relax ebnvironmental norms Personal Representation to Hon’ble Minister of Environment GOM and re-submission of letters and legal notice of 5 Oct. Minister proposed to visit site after Dussehra Personal Representation to Hon’ble Minister for Energy with a request not to re-commence coal handling at Hajee Bunder but divert it thru a port in Gujarat or Dharamtar. Minister disagreed vehemently and assured delegation that environmental norms will be observed but coal will have to continue but degradation of air quality has to be borne by locals in the larger interests of the state. He decided to call a meeting of all concerned on 28 Oct. Minutes of 8 CAC meeting held on 9 Oct uploaded by MPCB. Revised terms and conditions are more stringent than in 1 Aug Consent order, but extended to 31 Oct 2017 T of I report regarding interference by Ministers of Central and State Govts in environmental approval process
The extention till 31 Oct 2017 was indeed a shock to us and we could not predict what other acrobatics would be resorted to, to somehow get the MbPT to resume coal handling. We knew that the coal ships arriving in Dec had been contracted to unload in Dharamtar, but January ships were kept pending. So Meera and I met Mr Kaushik and it was decided that the safe way was to file our second P.I.L. Mr Kaushik wanted time to strategise what aspect to stress on. He came up with the view that we should stress that the Consent Order issued on 1.8.2015 backdating it to 30.9.2014 was bad in law. How can one ask in 2015 to take dust control measures in 2014. Secondly, issuing Consent, when it had been made clear even in their own site visit report, that terms and conditions had been violated, would be an abdication of their responsibility to protect the environment. We had copies of all relevant documents through our serial requests through RTI Act. Kaushik filed the Petition on 29 Oct. We kept a watch to see if there were any technical objections. There were none. I don’t know how Mr Kaushik does it, but the case was posted for an early hearing on 11 Dec. The hearing in front of Justice Kanade and Justice Mohite Dere opened with a statement by Mr Kaushik, that Coal dust of less than 2.5 microns particle size is lodged in our lungs, and stays there for our lifetime. Such dust is spread from Sewri all over Mumbai due to the prevailing winds. He said that the alternative port of Dharamtar had been identified and along with Dahej in Gujarat, was mentioned in the Contract from Mahagenco, the ultimate consignee of the imported coal. The junior lawyer representing MPCB merely said that the Consent to Operate had set terms and conditions. On the other hand, the advocate of MbPT made an extra long speech. He said that they had stopped coal handling, and they had issued notices to importers to remove their cargo of coal. Then he said that MbPT has not requested for Consent to Operate “but it appears that Mahagenco has applied for Consent” We were happy that the HC had agreed to hear our petition and in fact the senior judge said that the the health of citizens cannot be equated with cost of coal handling. I was disappointed that MPCB had escaped opprobrium. Instead, their garrulous lawyer had put MbPT in the soup. All this was recorded in the HC Order dictated by Justice Kanade and uploaded ten days later on 22 Dec. The Order called for MbPT to file a detailed affidavit explaining their position and for MPCB to file a brief reply. The date for the next hearing was posted as 16 Dec, even before the Order on the previous hearing was uploaded. It so happened that Justice Kanade was unwell on 16th and there was no hearing. Our team led by Shreekant Koradia wasted the whole day due to confusion regarding the re-assignment of cases to different benches. Nevertheless the next date was posted quickly as 13 Jan 2016, a Wednesday. I was keen to collect the replies and file a rejoinder in time for the hearing, so that we could counter any devious statements made by MPCB or MbPT. Our “deep throat” in MbPT told us that they were finalising their reply saying that the Min of Shipping had asked them to handle only clean cargo. Hence they were stopping coal permanently. On Monday 11 Jan, Anahita made good use of a letter we gave her. It was a copy of the letter from MbPT to MPCB dated 15 Oct requesting for reconsideration of the Consent Terms. She nailed the lie by MbPT recorded in the HC Order blaming Mahagenco alone. Her timing was superb because by 11 Jan the replies would have been finalised and they would be forewarned but unable to escape embarrassment in Court. Nothing was received in our advocate’s office on Monday 11th, or am Tue 12th. At 5.45pm on Tue, Ronak called to say that one reply had been filed, 13 pages by MPCB and I decided to draft the rejoinder. As I sat down to do so after dinner, I saw the next message from Kaushikji forwarding a 50 page reply by MbPT. We could of course trust MbPT’s regular solicitors Motiwalla & Co to hand over the copy only at 7.15 pm the evening before the hearing. I was pleasantly surprised that the MbPT had included confirmation that coal had been stopped permanently. The coal plots would be cleared in 3 months. Quantity not cleared would be auctioned off. Their consultants, the Boston Consulting Group had advised them that coal handling was not viable. All this was unexceptionable and I felt there was no need to rake up the past. Banishing Coal from Sewri 45
I then sat up till 3 am to counter MPCB. I felt that the MPCB’s reply merely recounted the bureaucratic steps taken during the year to give lip service to the HC Order of 25 Sep 2014. I made a list of occasions when the Board or the senior officers had been made aware that MbPT had not been adhering to the conditions laid down in the Consent Order. I listed the absence of monitoring reports in 2014, our presentation at the formal hearing on 11 Feb 2015, the site visit on 14 Apr, and a meeting as recently as in Jul 2015, with Deputy Chairman of MbPT Mr Wanage where he told the Chairperson of MPCB officially that they could not meet the conditions, namely provide a covered shed and mechanised handling. Our case was listed at no.35 out of 51, a lowly number, that too behind a Supplementary list. So we had time to meet first in Mr Kaushik’s office to discuss our response. Meera liked my rejoinder. Mr Kaushik’s view was that if we tabled a rejoinder, it would give the other side an opportunity to ask for time to respond again. He said we had “won” the case, so why prolong it. He also did not want to target the MPCB when the MbPT had fallen in line. I then went and sat in Court and told our Whatsapp group that I would give them notice to turn up when our case moved up the list. 13 Jan happened to be a peculiar day with the Supplementary list being fragmented with judges playing musical chairs between mixed benches. Some cases had been given specified timings like 2.30pm, 4pm etc. that too in different Court Rooms. Tired of waiting for my ‘Heads Up” Meera Sanyal and Shaku decided at 4pm to come to the Court Room in any case and wait there, rather than waiting in our Colaba homes. At 5pm as the Court was about to rise, Justice Kanade looked in my direction and said “I have seen you waiting from the morning. Is there anything urgent?” I couldn’t believe he was talking to me as we have all been tutored that only the appointed Counsel can speak in the venerable High Court. When my wife nudged me, I leaped to the lawyer’s podium and said “Sir, our case is against coal being dumped in Sewri. We have a grievance against the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board which has been granting Consent to operate even when they know that the Port can’t meet their conditions”. Justice Kanade said “In that case you file an affidavit”. By then Meera had joined me at the podium, ever the one, quick to capitalise an advantage. She said “ Sir, Can we have a hearing” I said “Tomorrow Sir” After some to’ing and fro’ ing, the Judge told his registrar “Tomorrow, put it in the Supplementary list” and rose for the day. Our team was euphoric that having sat through the day facing a bleak prospect of a further wait for a month or two which had become more evident as the day progressed, we were suddenly catapulted to an early hearing the next day. I told our team that my dark Benzer suit, matching Institute of Marine Engineers tie and grey hair had done the trick. The next morning was not without some drama too. Our case was no.927 on the Supplementary list, and allowing for some special notations against some earlier cases, we calculated that we were about 20th. A good prospect. At 10am, Mr Kaushik called to say that his daughter was unwell and he was taking her to the Doctor. He was still at Goregaon, 25 km away. His junior Jai Navlani had to be in another court. So I was to request our case to be held back till he arrived. Unlike the previous day, this day’s supplementary list was just melting away at the rate of knots. Meera got my rejoinder ready to be tabled, with Koradia and Ronak shuttling to the Xerox booth for foolscape prints on green legal paper. At 11.50, much to our relief, Mr Kaushik arrived, with the Board already showing 921 in progress. That gave him 20 minutes to catch his breath. Routine for lawyers in Bombay High Court, but tantalising for anxious petitioners.
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With Advocate Kaushik’s legal assistants, crucial to success The hearing started with the firm commitments for stopping and clearing the coal being read out by Mr Taslania representing MbPT. Then the counsel for Dharamtar port piped up to say that they had already unloaded three coal ships, with 2 lakh tons. He was asked to file an affidavit. We were watchful that some one may ask Dharamtar Port, in what way they were better than MbPT. Our ready answer would have been that the nearest population centre is at Wadkhal 5km away unlike Mumbai where the MERI hostel shares a wall with Hajee Bunder. Moreover, they also have the space and a long term interest in setting up mechanised handling and closed conveyor belt systems. However, the challenge came from an unexpected quarter. A lawyer stood up and said he represented the workers unions. They were not heard before deciding this case. He wanted copies of our petition etc. Kaushik shot back that they were nobody to us. They were welcome to file their own petition. Anyway, the judge asked them to file an affidavit. The next date was posted as 11 Feb. The Judge dictated his order saying that MbPT had made a commitment to stop coal permanently and clear the coal plots in 3 months. This indeed was final victory for us.
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Meera posted the result on twitter and facebook and put out banner headlines on change.org. AAP supporters pushed it aggressively too. Next day Anahita came out with the headline, “ Will clear coal in 3 months MbPT tells HC. Port Trust says it will auction coal if owners don’t remove it” This was one of her longest articles on coal. We asked her to introduce us to her editor who backed her judgment over 8 months and 25 articles on a single subject. There were many on social media who picked up our tweets and posts and patted us on the back for our victory. I then thought of this ‘Afterword’ The High Court order would not be necessary if in the year 2010, the Deputy Asst Traffic Manager of the Mumbai Port Trust at Hajee Bunder had issued a notice to the shippers that they will not be allowed to raise coal dust and spill coal on to the roadsides, and then on confirming non-compliance, issued without fear or favour a ‘Stop Order’ with the confidence that his superiors will support his action. The High Court order would not be necessary if his superiors had taken him to task for failing in his duty and charged him with degrading pristine land of the Port, or if the Sub Regional Officer of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board had implemented the conditions laid down in his own Consent Order for operating coal. The High Court Order would not have been necessary if the Trustees guided by the Chief Conservator and the Deputy Conservator of the Port with their hallowed titles had owned their duties to the public, whose trust they continue to hold. The High Court Order would not have been necessary if the Government of Maharashtra had shown any concern for the health of the citizens of Sewri (East) or if the Ministry of Shipping, Government of India had dictated that the campus of the Indian Maritime University with cadets of the Marine Engineering Research Institute or the trainees at the Lal Bahadur College of Nautical Science should not be defiled. The need for affected citizens to compile a mass of data, and for two public minded citizens to engage counsel pro bono and file Public Interest Litigation and pursue it doggedly for from 5 Sep 2014 till 14 Jan 2016 shows the failure of governance across the administrative entities, failure of a sense of public duty, failure of personal integrity. We the humble petitioners pray that this should not be repeated. Whenever it is repeated it is the duty of affected citizens to bring the guilty and the derelict to book “Jai Hind” Mr Kaushik said now the strategy for other PILs is clear. Find a law or code which is not being followed and build up the data. Then the P.I.L. will be a cake walk.
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But, that was not the end of our story. Mercator & Co were not willing to walk away quietly. They had been told by the High Court to file their own case when they filed their intervening petition and were told by Mr Kaushik, “they are nobody to us”. In what was called a “Chamber Summons” Mercator had tried to establish in their 135 page deposition that they were being discriminated against, considering that 5 ports are handling coal in Maharashtra. They said that their client, MAHAGENCO had written to the Government that electricity generation in Maharashtra would be affected adversely by stoppage of coal import through Haji Bunder. They tried to tarnish our image by stating in the intervening petition that Meera Sanyal was acting at the behest of the Indian Merchants Chamber to include housing and floating restaurants etc in the PortLands. Also that we were shifting coal handling to Dharamtar to help that port operator who was politically well connected. So Mercator filed their writ petition no. 378 of 2016 following basically the same route that we had chosen in September 2014, and got the same decision from the High Court which ordered on 17 Feb “ ..the limited prayer of the petitioner is that their representation be considered by Respondent No.2, Maharashtra Pollution Control Board.….. Respondent No.2 to consider … as expeditiously as possible.” In the same situation in Septembertember 2014 we had to wait 5 months for a hearing. However, Mercator got their hearing in 13 days, on 2 March 2016. While we had to wait a further 6 months for the minutes despite reminders, in the case of Mercator, the minutes were issued in 15 days, followed immediately by a site visit by a “ committee of experts”. In the meantime, Addl Ch Secy/Pr Secy, of Dept of Environment, Malini Shankar, who had withstood pressures to relax the two conditions (no.2 and no.9), was transferred. The new appointee was Mr SM Gavai. During this period we had taken the precaution of asking the Chairman MbPT officially on 18 Mar, as to when the coal dumps would be cleared. We received a reassuring reply on 5 May that coal handling at Haji Bunder had indeed been stopped. Out of 96000 Tons stocked in September 2015, 57000 Tons had been cleared by Apr 2016, with 38000 Tons remaining for which “… all possible measures to clear the coal are being made.” We had no inkling that the Mercators letters to MPCB and the Government from March 2016 would be considered at all. Yet on a day when Dr Anbalagan was on his annual vacation, a meeting of the Consent Appraisal Committee of MPCB was convened on 8 Jul 2016, with the newly appointed Pr Secy, Dept of Environment as Chairman. Coal handling was one of the 18 items on the agenda. Fortunately we were alerted by “Deep Throat”. We could access the minutes among the large volumes on the MPCB web site only because we were aware of its existence. The decision on coal handling was in an Annexure. The issues, we found, were obfuscated by dividing the Terms and Conditions into short term and long term measures. The “covered shed” was replaced by “tarpoline cover”. Tree plantation was a new short term measure! Mechanised handling was postponed to October 2017 as was “sensor based air quality measurement”. Yet we could not trace the conversion of the minutes into a Consent Order. We consulted Mr Kaushik if we should approach the High Court which had given us the option in the Order of 14 January 2016. Mr Kaushik felt that High Courts do not like to take pre-emptive measures based on petitioners’ apprehensions. Then we considered a legal notice. This too was considered as pre-emption. So I issued a letter to the Principal Secy, Environment Dept, Mr Gavai, enclosing a copy of the High Court Order in our PIL, and asked him to cancel the decision recorded in the minutes of the CAC. I sent copies to MbPT and MPCB. At the same time, we made an application under RTI to unearth the letter from MPCB which had been issued to give
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effect to the decision of the CAC. It took a month, but we got the letter from MPCB addressed to MbPT and Mercator dated 18 Jul. Fortunately, the letter expected Mercator to obtain the permission of the MbPT to restart the coal import with the relaxed conditions. We also heard rumours that Mercator had arranged for 2 coal ships to arrive within a fortnight, to pressurise the MbPT to say Yes. However, our scouts at Haji Bunder reported no such ships. During this time, I met Dr Anbalagan at MPCB and learnt he was unaware of these developments which had been engineered during his vacation. He said that a new Government Regulation (GR) was being issued as a Gazette Notification prohibiting coal dumps inside cities, effective 2 years from the date of issue. I told him that Mercator were using precisely this rule to claim 2 years extension of time to operate at Haji Bunder too. There were two unconnected but important developments in our favour. The Maritime India Summit, a major international conference, inaugurated by the Prime Minister at Mumbai on 14 Apr 2016, brought out a catalogue which included ‘clean’ projects in Mumbai Port which were incompatible with coal handling. The second assurance came from the newly appointed Chairman of the Mumbai Port Trust, Mr Sanjay Bhatia, I.A.S. a high profile officer who had been selected especially to sort out land matters on which he had gained relevant experience from his previous assignment as Managing Director of CIDCO, which has developed the new city of Navi Mumbai. Mr Sanjay Bhatia delivered the keynote address on 23 May 2016 at a conference in Mumbai organised by the Indian Merchants Chamber and APLI Mumbai, hosted at the prestigious Bombay Stock Exchange. It was extraordinary that Mr Bhatia presented his action plan to the public audience including the Press. The action plan included appointment of a Consultant to prepare a master plan covering the area from Sewri to Reay Rd. On 20 September 2016, MbPT received tenders from 8 bidders for the master planning of the designated area including Haji Bunder. There are binding rules in processing of commercial open tenders. No changes can be made without serious repercussions. This meant that coal handling could not be restarted. The Work Order for Master Planning has been issued on 30 Nov 2016, shutting out the coal issue We immediately proposed establishing an Ecopark in Sewri from where one could view the thousands of flamingos which winter along the Sewri mud banks. To publicise it, APLI Mumbai with the Koli Samaj at Sewri Koliwada organised a Koli cuisine festival on 23 Octoberober attended by over 900 enthusiasts. In the meatime, area adjacent o Haji Bunder has been leased to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for casting the reinforced concrete girders for the 22km Mumbai Trans Harbour Link to Navi Mumbai, a Rs 2000 Cr super prestigious project.
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December 2016, Still 10,000 Tonnes remaining out of peak 2,30,000 Tonnes People ask us if we can relax at least now. The answer is No, because we have declared victory several times since Aug 2015 only to be shocked by further insidious developments. So we will wait and watch as the national scene unfolds. The Minister for Energy Mr Piyush Goyal has revived Coal India which now has sufficient supplies to ensure thermal power plants in Western India also have sufficient indigenous coal to replace imports. The exception will be Tata Power Co. (TPC) at Trombay, which has been restricted to burning low ash coal available only from a few countries like Indonesia and Australia. In any case TPC has modern coal barge unloading and conveying facilities. The level of air pollution in Delhi shocked the country and coal is a major contributor. So let us hope we have succeeded in banishing coal from Sewri.
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