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The victims of groundwater depletion and environmental pollution in Plachimada village in Kerala’s Palakkad district will have to wait longer for compensation from the Hindustan Coca Cola Beverage Company. This is because the Ministry of Home Affairs first sat on the Plachimada Coca-Cola Victims Relief and Compensation Claims Special Tribunal Bill of 2011for nearly four months and then sent it back to the Kerala government. The bill should have been sent to the president, instead, for her assent.
The Bill, once enacted, would legitimise the constitution of a special tribunal for securing compensation of 216.25 crore from the soft drink giant.
A Right To Information (RTI) response received by Delhi-based non profit, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), reveals that the Bill was stuck earlier between ministries and later with the state. The Ministry of Home Affairs, which was coordinating the bill at the Centre, was supposed to send the bill for feedback to concerned ministries and later forward it to the president.
The Bill was passed by the Kerala Assembly in February and was sent to the Union home ministry on April 1, which later forwarded it to other ministries—Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Law and Justice, Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Water Resources in mid-April for comments. Subsequently, comments were also invited from the Central Ground Water Board under the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Food Processing Industries.
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‘Green tribunal not the right forum’
C P Ramaraja Prema Prasad, law secretary of Kerala informed that the objections in the legal opinion were primarily on legislative competence of the state to set up a tribunal when National Green Tribunal was present. Coca-Cola has objected to the Bill, earlier as well, saying that the compensation should be paid through the National Green Tribunal.
"The issue cannot be debated in National Green Tribunal because the National Green Tribunal Act requires the petitions for compensations to be filed within a period of five years, with a grace period of six months. But the most critical damage to groundwater and toxic contamination caused by Coca-Cola company at Plachimada occurred between 2000 and 2004. It is more than five years and so the National Green Tribunal cannot be used to redress the problem," explains Faizi. Coca-Cola India Pvt Ltd could not be contacted for comments.
At present the bill is with Kerala. “We are working on the comments and are expected to send it to Union home ministry in a week. We believe we have legislative competence,” says Prasad.