The Gujarat High Court has dismissed a long-standing petition by Tata Chemicals Ltd (TCL) and held it liable for extensive environmental damage to the marine sanctuary in the Gulf of Kutch. This came after a resident of Devpara village in Gujarat sent a statutory notice to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), accusing the company's Mithapur plant of ongoing environmental violations.
The court directed GPCB to determine the compensation amount within three months, and added that TLC must continue paying for ecological restoration until the sanctuary recovers.
According to the order on May 25, 2026, the court observed that, “It seems that under the interim order passed by this Court, the petitioner company is still discharging waste water in the land notified for Marine Park vide notifications dated 20.07.1982 and 26.11.1987.”
When the order was read out, the company asked for a stay, which was immediately turned down.
The order added: “The contention of the petitioner in the entire writ petition is that it has a right to continue to discharge waste water as it was discharging it from the 1962, even after notification of the area declaring it as Forest Area and Marine Park since 1982/1987 and that the District Authorities and the Collector had wrongly rejected the rights claimed by the petitioner to continue with the discharge over the said area, seems to be misconceived at the outset.”
The court also said that the petitioner is found to be a sheer encroacher of the government land of Marine Sanctuary, by discharging industrial waste water into the inter-tidal zone and the sea unlawfully.
TCL had progressively encroached upon government land. While effluent was initially discharged into TCL's own land (Survey No 48), it eventually overflowed into the sanctuary, covering over 100 hectares of government land by 2001.
The bench, comprising of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice DN Ray, noted, “There is a categorical observation in the order of the Collector that the petitioner had encroached upon the Marine Sanctuary area, which is beyond its land in survey No.48 progressively, and it has no right to discharge treated effluent or waste water into the area declared as Marine Sanctuary, which cannot be said to suffer from any error or law for the above noted facts, and the manner in which the petitioner has filed two writ petitions of 1987 and 2006 and obtained interim orders from this Court by making misstatement on oath.”
Upholding the Collector of Jamnagar's decision to reject TCL's claim of "existing rights", ruling that the company had no legal right to discharge waste into a protected sanctuary, it said that no forest clearance or coastal regulation zone clearance was obtained or granted to the petitioner and the petitioner kept on discharging the industrial effluent into the area in question, of marine sanctuary by asserting its alleged rights, which have been rejected by the Collector thrice between April 2006 and March 2007.
Stating the environmental impact, it said that, “Consequently, for the environmental damage caused to the fragile ecology of the area and converting the area of Marine Sanctuary into the ‘Black Desert’, as a result of illegal act of the petitioner, the petitioner is held liable to pay damages caused to the environment on “Polluter Pays” principle.”
It further directed to pay compensation for the damages, “For the long-term damage caused to the environment by the petitioner, by acting irresponsibly in violation of its fundamental constitutional duty to preserve natural resources and every living creature, the petitioner is held absolutely liable to pay compensation and continuing damages for restoration. We clarify that the petitioner company has a continuing duty to pay compensation until the damage caused by it to the fragile ecology of the area (Marine Sanctuary) concerned is reversed and the area of Marine Sanctuary becomes pollution free,” the court directed.
Directing the GPCB to assess the ecological damages and determine compensation amount to be paid by TCL within three months, the court said, “The GPCB and local authorities must take "stringent measures" to stop ongoing pollution immediately. This includes the potential closure of the industry until their new deep-sea closed pipeline and diffuser system is fully operational and compliant with 2011 standards.”
The development was well-received by a section of environmentalists. Rajesh Ramakrishnan, convener of the Campaign to Defend Nature and People, a network of nature-dependent primary producers said, “This order provides a glimmer of hope to scores of farmers, pastoralists and traditional fishers in villages around the TCL plant who have been suffering the impact of pollution on their livelihoods for decades, without redressal by local authorities and statutory bodies.”
The order also casts doubts on TCL’s claims of actively collaborating with government bodies to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, restoring coastal and marine ecosystems, and strengthening community resilience and improving quality of life, he added.
TLC's plant in Mithapur, Devbhumi Dwarka district began operations in 1939, and manufactures table salt, soda ash, cement, light soda ash, sodium bicarbonate, bromine and caustic soda. Down To Earth had earlier reported a hunger strike by a resident of a nearby village and his letter to the Member Secretary of Gujarat Pollution Control Board alleging severe and ongoing environmental pollution by the plant, with people’s complaints evoking only procedural and ineffective steps by GPCB.
Tata Chemicals filed a petition in 2006 in the Gujarat High Court against an order by the District Collector, seeking acceptance of the company’s rights to continue to discharge industrial waste water into the sea through the intertidal zone in an area of 200 hectares. The petition was part of an earlier Special Civil Application in 1987, where the company argued that this area was in use by them prior to and after July 1982, when it was declared part of the Marine National Park and Sanctuary, Jamnagar.
The High Court found that no forest clearance or CRZ clearance was obtained by the company, and it kept on discharging its industrial effluent into the area of the Marine Sanctuary by asserting its alleged rights, which had been rejected by the Collector in 2006 and 2007. This had “resulted in causing severe damage to the ecological, faunal, floral, geo-morphologic, natural, zoological and geographical significance of the area declared as Marine Sanctuary.”
The company had claimed that GPCB had permitted it to continue discharging effluents, which GPCB had denied on affidavit in 2008 itself. The Court ruled that in any case, once declared a Marine Sanctuary GPCB would not have the authority to do so. Even after the revised standards of waste water for a Soda Ash factory were notified in 2011 by the Ministry of Environment and Forest, the company continued with the illegal discharge. It took 15 years thereafter to lay deep sea closed pipelines with the diffuser base system of discharge.