Arvind Gunasekar 
New Delhi: The CBI has registered a corruption case against Hindalco Industries Ltd, a subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group.
The CBI has accused Hindalco Industries Ltd of violating the Environmental Clearance granted for coal mining in Odisha and alleges that Hindalco mined 3.045 million tonnes of excess coal than the permitted capacity.
CBI has also charged Chandini, then Director in Ministry of Environment and Forest for allegedly misusing her office and providing undue benefits to Hindalco by granting further Environmental Clearance for doubling coal mining capacity in Talabira mine in 2011 in violation of prohibition imposed by the Ministry in critically polluted areas.
In its FIR, the CBI has stated that the offence began in the year 2000 which includes the tenure of Vajpayee led NDA Govt in Centre.
Back in 2016, the CBI had registered a Preliminary Enquiry against officials of Aditya Birla Management Corporation Ltd to probe allegations of “payments of massive bribe amounts by M/s ABMCPL to unknown officials of Ministry of Environment and Forest during the period 2011 to 2013 for grant of Environmental Clearance (hereinafter known as EC) to its projects.”
After eight years of Preliminary Enquiry, CBI has converted the same into a full-fledged investigation by registering a FIR against Hindalco under Prevention of Corruption Act.
Incidentally, the preliminary enquiry has been converted into an FIR as Aditya Birla Group moved to acquire India Cements to compete with Adani Group’s ACC.
“Hindalco was found to have violated earlier ECs granted in 2001 & 2009, producing excess quantity of coal over and above the capacity for which ECs were granted by MoEF”, reveals CBI’s preliminary enquiry report.
Sources say, CBI initiated the preliminary enquiry in 2016 based on ‘diary entries’ of alleged payment of bribes recovered from the premises of Hindalco during searches in an alleged coal scam case.