- (1.) The petitioner No.1 is a Public Limited Company incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956 and is engaged in the manufacture and sale of aluminum and its semis. Petitioner No.2 is the Senior Vice President in Petitioner No.1 Company and is also a shareholder. Petitioner No.3 is the contractor to whom a contract has been given by petitioner No.1.
(2.) The petitioner No.1 contends that the manufacture of aluminum is a continuous process which requires continuous supply of power and, for this purpose, the petitioners have set up a coal base thermal plant at Renusagar for captive generation of electricity so that continuous supply of power is given to its manufacturing unit at Renukoot.
(3.) During the course of generation of electricity, dry fly ash is produced by the Renusagar Power Plant. For the disposal of dry fly ash, the petitioner No.1 is required to construct an ash dyke which consists of ash dams for the disposal of ash generated by the power plant as per the requirement and specification given by the Central and State Government Pollution Control Board. One such ash dyke has been constructed by petitioner No.1 at Bichhari Tola Sonebhadra. The height of this ash dyke was required to be raised by 8.5 meters and, accordingly, the petitioner No.1 awarded a contract to petitioner No.3, namely, M/s K.N. International Limited. Petitioner No.3, namely, the contractor applied to the Executive Engineer, Rihand Dam, Civil Division, Pipri, Sonebhadra, seeking permission to excavate one lac cubic meter of soil from 50 acres in village Rehata and Jamshila, Tehsil Duddhi in District Sonebhadra. Permission was grant on payment of Rs.53,225/-. Mining permit was also granted to petitioner No.3. Permission was also sought from the Divisional Forest Officer, Renukoot Forest Division, seeking permission to excavate the soil. Such permission was granted on 14.7.2007. The land from where the soil was to be excavated was 500 meters outside the boundary of forest land. Thereafter, mining permit in Form MM-10 was issued by the competent authority in favour of petitioner No.3 for mining the soil from the excavation site.;