“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.

... contd.