HomeQ&ARead the news report below and identify the following aspects: 1. What is the case about? 2. Who has been the beneficiary in the case? 3. Who is the petitioner in the case? 4. Visualize what would have been the different arguments put forward by the company. 5. What arguments would the farmers have put forward? Supreme Court orders REL to pay Rs 300 crore to Dahanu farmers: Our Corporate Bureau 24 March 2005: Mumbai: The Supreme Court has ordered Reliance Energy to pay Rs. 300 crores to farmers who grow the chikoo fruit in the Dahanu area outside Mumbai. The order comes after the chikoo growers petitioned the court against the pollution caused by Reliance’s thermal power plant. Dahanu, which is 150 km from Mumbai, was a self-sustaining agricultural and horticultural economy known for its fisheries and forests just over a decade ago, but was devastated in 1989 when a thermal power plant came into operation in the region. The next year, this fertile belt saw its first crop failure. Now, 70 per cent of the crop of what was once the fruit bowl of Maharashtra is gone. The fisheries have shut and the forest cover has thinned. Farmers and environmentalists say that fly ash from the power plant entered ground water and polluted the entire eco-system. The Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority ordered the thermal station to set up a pollution control unit to reduce sulphur emissions, and in spite of a Supreme Court order backing the order the pollution control plant was not set up even by 2002. In 2003, Reliance acquired the thermal station and re-submitted a schedule for installation process in 2004. As the pollution control plant is still not set up, the Dahanu Taluka Environmental Protection Authority asked Reliance for a bank guarantee of Rs. 300 crores.

Read the news report below and identify the following aspects: 1. What is the case about? 2. Who has been the beneficiary in the case? 3. Who is the petitioner in the case? 4. Visualize what would have been the different arguments put forward by the company. 5. What arguments would the farmers have put forward? Supreme Court orders REL to pay Rs 300 crore to Dahanu farmers: Our Corporate Bureau 24 March 2005: Mumbai: The Supreme Court has ordered Reliance Energy to pay Rs. 300 crores to farmers who grow the chikoo fruit in the Dahanu area outside Mumbai. The order comes after the chikoo growers petitioned the court against the pollution caused by Reliance’s thermal power plant. Dahanu, which is 150 km from Mumbai, was a self-sustaining agricultural and horticultural economy known for its fisheries and forests just over a decade ago, but was devastated in 1989 when a thermal power plant came into operation in the region. The next year, this fertile belt saw its first crop failure. Now, 70 per cent of the crop of what was once the fruit bowl of Maharashtra is gone. The fisheries have shut and the forest cover has thinned. Farmers and environmentalists say that fly ash from the power plant entered ground water and polluted the entire eco-system. The Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority ordered the thermal station to set up a pollution control unit to reduce sulphur emissions, and in spite of a Supreme Court order backing the order the pollution control plant was not set up even by 2002. In 2003, Reliance acquired the thermal station and re-submitted a schedule for installation process in 2004. As the pollution control plant is still not set up, the Dahanu Taluka Environmental Protection Authority asked Reliance for a bank guarantee of Rs. 300 crores.

Political ScienceClass 10CBSEAnswered 31 Mar 2026

Answer

1. A case of pollution by Reliance Thermal Power Plant.
2. The farmers have been beneficiary.
3. The chikoo growers of Dahanu.
4. The main contention of Dahanu Taluka Environment Protection Authority and the
Supreme Court was setting up of a pollution control plant.
Reliance acquired the plant in 2003, so it pleaded for further extension of time limit
for setting up of pollution control plant.’
The pollution was not wholly of its making as it had acquired the plant in 2003.
Accordingly, it had argued for the reduction of penalty.

5. The farmers might have argued that since Reliance had failed in its commitment to
install the pollution control unit in 2004, it did not have intentions to do it, so it must
be penalized to some greater extent.

Political Science · Class 10

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