New Delhi: The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi granted preliminary approvals in late 2022 and early 2023  to an Adani group company to build three large hydropower projects in old-growth forests and grasslands teeming with wildlife, areas legally out of bounds for such construction, according to government documents and expert assessments.

Officials from India’s ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEFCC) interpreted legal regulations in a manner that the law did not allow, said experts. The result was that the projects planned by Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL), in what are called ecologically sensitive or fragile areas, cleared the first step in the approval process, called “terms of reference” in legalese, the documents show. 

The company’s own documents, attached with its application, revealed its plans to use more than 150 hectares of forest land (the size of more than 200 football fields) in ecologically sensitive areas to build four dams, access roads, workers’ housing and other infrastructure for the three projects. 

These are some of the key findings from an analysis of government and company documents related to the Rs-19,256-crore Adani projects, accessed by Article 14 under India’s right-to-information law and from the Parivesh portal of the environment ministry.

Independent experts said the potential consequences of this interpretation included the destruction of forests and wildlife in the area of the three projects—located in the western Maharashtra districts of Pune, Satara, Kolhapur and Raigad—and would encourage more hydropower projects in other ecologically fragile areas of the Western Ghats. 

More than 50,000 sq km—the size of Punjab—within the Ghats is classified as ecologically sensitive, meaning these areas contain animal and plant species that are either rare, endemic or especially valuable and easily disturbed by human activity.

The Western Ghats are a chain of mountains older than the Himalayas, dating back 150 million years to the Jurassic age, inscribed in 2012 on a World Heritage List and described as one of the world’s eight “hottest hotspots” of biological diversity.   

The three Adani hydropower projects are technically called “pump-storage projects”, classified under the ‘red’ category of India’s environment laws, prohibited in these ecologically fragile areas of the Western Ghats. 

The red category is a description for industries with the highest potential for pollution, according to the Central Pollution Control Board.

Article 14 sought comment from AGEL and the environment ministry, but there was no response to emailed questions, despite reminders over two weeks. 

None of the Adani projects appear to have received the final environmental clearance and construction can only legally begin after that.

If the three Adani projects come to fruition, the company is likely to land more. They are part of an AGEL plan to invest Rs 60,000 crore to increase its installed capacity of hydropower in Maharashtra from none today to 11000 MW (mega watt). 

On 28 June 2022, the company signed a Rs 60,000-crore memorandum of understanding with the state government of Maharashtra for five pump-storage projects, including the current three. The other two also are meant to be in the Western Ghats.

A Matter Of Degree

While pump-storage projects do not cause as much pollution as coal mining and thermal power, they can cause irreversible damage to forests and ecology, according to experts and a review of company documents.

These projects involve the creation and use of two reservoirs (most often using dams), one higher than the other. Water is pumped from the lower to the upper reservoir and released on to turbines to generate electricity.

In late 2022, during internal deliberations on one of the three proposed Adani units in the Western Ghats, the 2100 MW Patgaon pump storage project in Kolhapur district—after which the other two at Tarali and Warasgaon, spread across Satara and Pune districts were approved—environment ministry officials argued that current regulations governing big hydropower projects in the Western Ghats’ ecologically sensitive areas were “contradictory”. 

While one direction issued by the environment ministry under section 5 of the Environment Protection Act (EPA)1986  in November 2013 prohibited red category projects, an office memo—with no legal standing, said experts—put out in December 2013 encouraged hydropower in such fragile areas but prohibited red category projects. 

Yet, environment ministry officials in November 2022 gave preliminary approval to one of the three Adani projects, citing the December office memo and two precedents, one in Karnataka in 2017 and another in Tamil Nadu in 2020. 

In general, such interpretation will spur more projects in India’s last wild areas, once considered inviolate for “large-scale” industry and construction, said experts. At risk are the country's last forests, natural resources and the health of its people, as stories in Article 14 (here, here, here, here and here) have explained. 

Running over 1,500 km along India’s western coast, the Western Ghats influence the south-west monsoon and feed three of India’s seven largest rivers, which water much of the Indian peninsula, home to about a fourth of the country's population.

Between 2014 and 2023, more than 144,000 hectares of forest land was “diverted” for mining, roads, transmission lines and other infrastructure. Of this, the union government approved cutting down or submerging more than 6,600 hectares of forest for hydroelectricity. In 2019-2020 alone, the government approved 4,634 hectares for removal or submergence, the highest in 15 years.

According to the draft plans approved by the environment ministry, two of the three Adani projects plan to make use of at least one existing reservoir each, but they will still involve construction of an additional reservoir within pristine forests, to ensure there are two of them for every project. 

The third project will involve construction of two new reservoirs behind dams. 

‘Clean Energy’ With Damaging Effects

The three projects will allow AGEL to add 4800 MW to the group’s “clean energy” portfolio and, perhaps, offset criticism (here, here, here and here) of the Adani group’s coal-mining business. 

But independent conservationists, who have done fieldwork near the locations of these planned projects, analysed the documents and warned of widespread adverse impacts. 

The Patgaon project in Kolhapur district would lead to “loss of forest habitat and most importantly, it will likely break the tiger/wildlife corridor to Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary”, said Girish Punjabi, a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Trust, a think tank and advocacy group.

“The project in… Pune (district) appears to be located at the crestline of the Western Ghats,” said Punjabi. “The forest quality appears to be high and the project will have a negative impact on the habitat, resident wildlife and biodiversity in the region during the construction phase.”

Ecologist Radhika Kanade, PhD, of the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management, a nonprofit, said the Warasgaon backwater area in Pune district harboured several sacred groves and patches of forests that supported diverse flora and fauna, traditionally protected by local communities for their religious or cultural significance.

Significant fauna in the area include leopard, barking deer, small Indian fox, Indian gaur, palm civet, giant squirrel and wild boar, along with a host of birds, butterflies, herpetofauna and insects.  

“The proposed projects and related activities may result in the loss of habitat for these species,” said Kanade.

Forests near the Warasgaon backwaters and surrounding the protected area of the Koyna wildlife sanctuary nearby were “essential wildlife corridors”, said Kanade.

“The proposed hydropower projects will include the construction of new reservoirs, which will result in submergence,” said Kanade. “There will be new road constructions to the proposed sites, fencing, and conversions of forest lands to non-forest lands.”

“This will bring about severe modifications in the areas that serve as wildlife corridors for the movements of large animals, including tiger, leopard, Indian gaur, etc,” said Kanade. 

The company’s own documents cite significant environmental concerns.

Adani Report Warns Of ‘Impacts’ & ‘Problems’

Adani documents submitted to the environment ministry indicate that the company is pitching these projects as the company’s contribution towards India’s energy transition goals which, in turn, will assist larger national initiatives against climate change. 

In an address at the 2023 climate summit in Dubai, Prime Minister Modi listed three key climate goals for the country: reduction of emissions intensity by 45% by 2030; increasing the share of non-fossil fuels (renewable energy) to 50%; and moving towards the goal of “net-zero” emissions by 2070.  

“Given [India’s] ambitious renewable goals, there is hence an enormous demand for pumped storage projects,” said a July 2022 Adani “pre-feasibility report” submitted to the environment ministry for the project in Satara district. “On the above assumptions 500 GW renewable will require 144.7 GW conventional or pumped storage hydropower. The Project is therefore well justified.” 

The company said it did not consider the project to be harmful, but its own report acknowledged destruction during construction.

“Overall, the siting and environmental impacts of the project will have the least impact on the region and could be a boon to the region with proper planning and implementation,” said the company’s 2022 report cited earlier. 

Yet, the same report acknowledged a string of environmental impacts—from plant and road construction, blasting, “muck disposal” and effluents—on water, wildlife and forests and warned that impacts “need to be reviewed closely as they could be significant due to the nature and intensity of the impacts”.

The areas where the Adani Group intends to build the three projects contain some of the last undisturbed forests in the Western Ghats.

“The congregation of a large number of construction workers during the peak construction phase is likely to create problems of sewage disposal, solid waste management, tree cutting to meet fuel requirements…” said the Adani pre-feasibility report. “Due to the increased level of human interference in and around the project area, there will be impact on the flora.”

After Opposition, Plan Changes

The company had to redraw plans for one of these projects, after local farmers and a member of the Maharashtra assembly protested against AGEL’s plans of using water from a dam at Patgaon to generate electricity. 

In a letter to the district collector of Kolhapur on 23 January 2024, the company wrote, “...we have made a decision that we shall not use the existing Patgaon reservoir for our project”. 

“We are exploring possibilities of shifting the location of the Patgaon Pumped Storage Project,” said the letter. “We will keep you informed and provide an update as soon as we identify and check feasibility (sic) of the new site.” 

It is unclear if this meant that the company had also discarded the plan to build a new reservoir, powerhouse and other supporting infrastructure for the Patgaon project after acquiring 70 acres of forest land near the village of Anjiwade in Sindhudurg district. 

“We do not have anything additional to say than what is already written in the letter,” an Adani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Article 14. 

The plans for the other two projects remain unchanged. The company plans to acquire more than 80 hectares of forest land for the other two projects.

‘Highly Questionable’ Interpretations Of Law

Environmental law experts said in interviews that the interpretation of regulations by environment ministry officials for giving initial approvals was legally questionable. 

In their reading of the same regulations, large hydropower projects were prohibited in the environmentally sensitive areas of the Western Ghats.

“As per my observations, the appraisal of these projects is highly questionable,” said Debadityo Sinha, who leads the climate and ecosystems team at the legal think tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. 

Sinha said the “terms of reference”, or the preliminary approval that the environment ministry granted to Adani Green Energy to study potential environmental impacts, violated the EPA. 

The environment ministry’s November 2013 orders—prohibiting red category projects, such as pumped-storage, in ecologically fragile areas of the Western Ghats—were legally sound, said Sinha, since they were issued under section 5 of the EPA. This section empowers the ministry to issue directions of “closure, prohibition or regulation of any industry, operation or process”. 

But the ministry’s December 2013 office memo encouraging hydropower projects in such areas does not appear to have legal backing, said Sinha.

Advocate Harish Vasudevan, a lawyer in the Kerala High Court, after analysing Adani’s documents, said if the Central Pollution Control Board included hydropower projects “above a particular threshold” in the red category, then the environment ministry, “should not even process any applications from ESA villages”. 

“Forget about granting ToR (terms of reference), they have no power to even process the application,” said Vasudevan. “Issuance of ToR is an illegal act that can be punished by imprisonment.” 

Vasudevan said any citizen could seek prosecution before a chief judicial magistrate’s court after following procedure laid down in the EPA’s section 19(2), which says that a court can take cognizance, if a person gives a 60-day notice to the government or the “relevant competent authority”.

A Conflict Of Interest

In November 2023, the Opposition in Maharashtra criticised the union government for appointing Adani Green Energy advisor Janardhan Choudhary as a member of the union environment ministry’s expert advisory committee (EAC). 

This committee approves river valley and hydropower projects nationwide and was due to clear six Adani projects, including one of the three proposed in the Western Ghats, the Tarali project.

After political criticism of his appointment, Choudhary and environment ministry officials confirmed that he had resigned from the committee. 

Choudhary told Article 14 his association with the Adani group company was known to the ministry and he was “co-opted” into the EAC because of his experience of working for more than three decades in the hydropower sector, particularly the state-owned National Hydropower Corporation. 

An environment ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed that Choudhary had indeed mentioned his association with Adani Green Energy, yet a possible conflict of interest aspect was “overlooked”.

The alleged conflict of interest issue, which arose after the projects received initial approvals, is not the only thing questionable about the three Adani projects in the Western Ghats, said experts. 

As we said, the interpretation of regulations by environment ministry officials in granting initial permissions could open the floodgates for similar projects in other ecologically sensitive areas of the Western Ghats. 

How Govt Created A Legal Interpretation

While initial approvals granted by the environment ministry to Adani Green Energy to conduct environmental impact studies were only the first steps in getting an environmental clearance, independent research and official data have shown that, for forest, wildlife and environment clearances, projects are rarely denied final approval. 

Of the three Adani projects, the 2100 MW Patgaon pumped storage project, estimated to cost more than Rs 8,000 crore, first came to the environment ministry’s group of experts, the EAC, in late August 2022. 

The EAC noted that the project was in the Western Ghats and discussed a representation it had received, pointing out that the project would be constructed in a wildlife corridor. 

The experts recommended that the Adani group company be allowed to conduct environmental impact studies to gauge impacts. By early October 2023, the project was further examined by environment ministry officials. One of them recorded obvious concerns. 

Dr Saurabh Upadhyay, an environment ministry scientist, wrote that “it has been found” that the ministry’s direction issued on 13 November 2013 “prohibited certain projects/activities including ‘Red Category’ of industries in ESA from date of issue of said directions (sic).”  

He noted that the CPCB classified power plants under the red category. 

Upadhyay and a senior officer, Yogendra Pal Singh, suggested that they seek an opinion from the ecologically sensitive zone (ESZ) division of the ministry if the November 2013 directions were still in force and if hydropower or pumped storage plants were permitted in Western Ghats. 

‘Officials Couldn’t Really Do Much’

A government source familiar with the issue, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the location of the first Adani project that has received initial approval.

“There was some concern over the fact that the project location is in an ecologically sensitive area,” said the source. “But knowing whose project it is, officials couldn’t really do much.”

Later in October 2022, Shruti Rai Bharadwaj, a scientist of the ESZ division of the environment ministry, said in an internal note that many policies and regulations regulated or prohibited activities in the Western Ghats, but only two were legally binding. 

The November 2013 directions and the December 2013 Office Memorandum cited previously, both accepted recommendations of a “high-level working group” (HLWG) of the same year led by K Kasturirangan, member (science) of the erstwhile Planning Commission.

Bharadwaj wrote that both documents were “contradictory” as far as hydropower projects were concerned. Yet, citing the “intent” of the HLWG Report, she noted that “hydropower projects can be allowed subject to certain conditions”. 

Bharadwaj also mentioned that if the ministry wanted to implement the “intent of the HLWG report”, the November 2013 directions “need to be revised, appropriately”. 

This was not done. 

Tanmay Kumar, a senior environment ministry official reporting to environment minister Bhupender Yadav, was aware of the internal deliberations relating to the project, the documents we obtained through RTI suggest.

In early November 2022, another official wrote that “new information has come to light”. W Bharat Singh, a senior scientist at the environment ministry, referred to the two projects that had been allowed in the environmentally sensitive areas of the Western Ghats a few years earlier. 

This appears to have changed how the Adani application was handled.

The next day, on 3 November 2022, Bharadwaj wrote a fresh note with another interpretation of the law. 

This time she cited two reasons to conclude that the text of the December 2013 office memo was applicable to the Adani project. One, the December office memo came after the directions issued in November 2013. Two, it was “also in sync” with the HLWG’s recommendations. 

Citing these two reasons, Bharadwaj wrote that “the provision” of the office memo in December “can be taken into consideration to resolve the ambiguity that has arisen wrt Hydropower projects in Western Ghat (sic.)” The memo allowed hydropower projects in the region. 

Eventually, Bharadwaj’s legal interpretation appears to have prevailed and ensured that the Patgaon project received the initial go ahead. This interpretation was then applied to the other two Adani projects. 

‘A Grave Error’

Independent environmental law experts said the environment ministry’s reading of regulations had no legal foundation.

Sinha of the Vidhi Centre For Legal Policy said that only the November 2013 directions were legally valid, since they were based on powers available to the environment ministry under section 5 of the EPA. The December 2013 office memo is, he said, “a type of administrative communication. (It) is not notified under any statute.” 

Sinha said that the pollution control board’s regulation “clearly implies that any hydropower project more than 25 MW must be treated as a red category project”, which means it cannot be allowed. 

Until the November 2013 directions were amended or repealed, neither the ministry nor its expert group could consider any hydropower projects above 25 MW in western ghats. 

Sinha said that “the EAC not only violated the directions under Section 5 of the EPA, but also committed a grave error by not applying its mind”.

“The ministry is completely wrong in relying on a past mistake,” said Sinha. “It is just stating that I am entitled to commit a crime in future because I was not caught before. Law cannot work like that. A violation cannot be used to justify another violation, right?” 

“The MoEFCC should have cancelled the environmental clearances of such projects on noticing such violations and strict disciplinary action must be taken against officers involved,” said Sinha.

Advocate Vasudevan of the Kerala High Court pointed out that, at best, the December 2013 office memo can be “seen as a policy document” but it has no “legal value”. 

On the policy level too, he argued, this was a problematic document because it communicated an “in principle” acceptance of the report prepared by a “high level working group”, as it was called, led by former chairman of the Indian space programme, K Kasturirangan, in 2013. 

Only 37% of the entire ghats region was termed an ecologically sensitive area by the Kasturirangan committee. 

A previous report submitted in 2011 to the environment ministry by a 15-member expert committee led by eminent scientist Madhav Gadgil, PhD,  argued that all of the Western Ghats was ecologically sensitive but suggested three types of classification of the forests, allowing certain activities in areas less sensitive than others.

“There is no scientific basis in not accepting many of the recommendations [of the Gadgil committee] report,” said Vasudevan. “None of the draft notifications (on Western Ghats put out by the environment ministry) are stating reasons properly. None are reasonable.”

Kolkata-based lawyer Upama Bhattacharjee had an interpretation that differed from Sinha’s and Vasudevan’s. 

“The allowance given to encouraging hydel projects in Western Ghats cannot imply that projects of any capacity can be fielded in the region,” said Bhattarcharjee.

Bhattacharjee pointed out that though the two other projects preceding the Adani projects received initial clearances, one soon ran into legal trouble. In November 2021, the Karnataka project was still conducting initial surveys, and the high court was hearing cases against the project.

Opening The Doors For More 

A letter written by Vneet Jaain, AGEL managing director and CEO, to a senior Maharashtra state government official in February 2022 made clear the company’s plans in the state, which Jaain said had “very good potential” of 27000 MW for pump storage projects, 

“AGEL is interested to set up (sic) PSP (pumped-storage) projects in the state of Maharashtra with approx. (sic) 11000 MW capacity to be developed in the next 4-5 years.” wrote Jaain.

Aside from the three mentioned earlier in this story, the two other projects that find mention in the letter were also planned in the Western Ghats.

The 5400 MW Koyna pump storage project is being planned in Satara district at an investment of Rs. 21, 000 crore, not very far from the 1500 MW project over the Tarali river. 

The 700 MW Malshej pump storage project is planned in Pune and Thane at an approximate investment of Rs 3,650 crore. Since these two projects, with a combined investment of Rs 24,650 crores, are also planned in environmentally sensitive areas of the Western Ghats, it is likely, said experts, that the legal interpretation will help them receive environmental clearances as well.

The AGEL memorandum of understanding with the Maharashtra government was signed in June 2022, and by August 2022, the environment ministry’s group of experts was discussing the first of these five projects. 

A senior government official told Hindustan Times in July 2023 that the Maharashtra government considered the Western Ghats a “viable location for such projects, which provide round the clock power” and that it had signed similar MoUs with other companies.

(Akshay Deshmane is an independent investigative reporter based in New Delhi.)

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