New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday was informed by Graphite India Ltd (GIL) that it was not utilizing imported needle petroleum coke (petcoke) at its plant located in Bengaluru. The plant is facing complaints of pollution and emission of black dust.

A bench comprising of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta was informed by GIL that the company is using domestic petcoke at its plant and purpose was packaging and it was not being used as a fuel.

The Apex court had on October 9 taken note of a filed report by the court-mandated Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) which had claimed that GIL’s plant located in Whitefield, Bengaluru, was using domestic petcoke due to which huge amount of air pollution was being released in the area along with black dust.

At that time, the Top court had issued a notice to GIL company directing it to explain the reason for not stopping needle petcoke immediately over the reason that it was “causing tremendous pollution and damage to the health of the community in Bengaluru”.

The counsel representing GIL had said during the hearing that they required some more time to file their affidavit over the matter.

The bench was informed by the lawyer that a team of Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) had also paid a visit to the site.

The bench directed GIL to file an affidavit from its side and posted the issue for hearing on October 23. It also directed the KSPCB to file their report before it.

Last month, the Supreme court had permitted the application by GIL under which the company sought the court’s permission to import needle pet coke to be utilized as feed stock for the manufacturing of graphite electrodes, used in the steel industry.

When the matter of pollution being emitted by the plant was raised before the Apex court on October 9, the bench had said that the matter required to be dealt on an urgent basis for the reason that it was affecting the health of the people living in the area.

The Supreme court is hearing the matter in relation to petcoke which came up during the adjudicating of a matter of air pollution in the national capital, Delhi.

The reason for filing the petition in the Supreme Court is pollution, which is very disturbing for the residents of the area.

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