Ironically, although activists had been long campaigning for this and the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee had submitted a series of reports highlighting alleged environmental violations by the company, the judges cited the decision of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund — the largest pension fund in Europe — to divest its stake in Vedanta.

The stake is tiny, just 0.16% ($15.16 million) — the fund’s corpus is $359 billion — but the Norwegian decision was announced by its government earlier this month claiming that Vedanta “has caused serious damage to people and to the environment as a result of its economic activities.”

“It was very interesting for us to hear that the Supreme Court of India has referred to a small investment like ours,” said Gro Nystun, chairman of the Council of Ethics, Norwegian Government Pension Fund speaking to The Indian Express today from Oslo.

The purpose of the Norwegian fund is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector to hedge against future shocks in oil prices. In the last three years, it has developed ethical guidelines on environmental degradation, human rights violations and child labour. It has interest in 7,000 companies and systematically goes through every portfolio each month.

“In Vedanta’s case, the company kept popping up on both the environmental and the human rights violations,” said Nystun. That is when they decided to send a a fact-finding team in October last year. The team investigated all of Vedanta’s subsidiaries here — Sterlite Industries, Madras Aluminium Company, Bharat Aluminium Company and Vedanta Alumina.

“We were comfortable with our findings as we relied on a number of sources, including the NGOs and the media. Once that matched with CEC’s findings, we were pretty solid,” she said. According to the council, they check and double-check claims and allegations by NGOs and “become familiar with their agendas”.

The council’s recommendation was based on surveys and investigations conducted or commissioned by Indian authorities, reports from national and international non-governmental organisations, articles in Indian and international newspapers, and letters and documentaries. Besides, the council had commissioned its own studies by external Norwegian, British and Indian consultants.

Then the pension fund gave the company an opportunity to reply but they didn’t respond. The report has a paragraph on Vedanta’s “corruption” but has not based its disinvestment decision on it. “Corruption is always difficult to document and prove, so we just mentioned it,” said Nystun.

Today, the three-judge bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice Court said, it was not opposed “in principle” to the mining of the Niyamgiri Hills, and has ordered Vedanta’s Indian subsidiary Sterlite Industries to submit a fresh proposal after setting up a joint Special Purpose Vehicle with the Orissa state government’s Orissa Mining Corporation to increase the company’s accountability in India.

It will have to commit to Rs 55 crore for Net Present Value for forest destruction , Rs 50 crore for wildlife management plan, Rs 10 crore or 5% of profits before tax (whichever is more) from mining projects all over the country to the Orissa government, and Rs 12.20 crore for tribal development. It will also have to supply a list of people the project will absorb on a permanent basis.

The activists, while welcoming the decision, have begun to train their guns at Sterlite too: “While we appreciate the concern of the Court in taking the mining rights away from Vedanta Resources PLC, which is not even listed in India, we are at a loss to understand how the same can be considered for Sterlite even through an SPV.”