New Delhi: The Supreme Court today declined permission to the local unit of Britain's Vedanta Resources to mine bauxite for its proposed aluminium project in Orissa, but left a door open for its another associate Sterlite Industries to extract the mineral in collaboration with state agencies.

"We are not inclined to grant approval to Vedanta Alumina Ltd (VAL)... From the financial statements it is clear that it is not a subsidiary but an associate of Sterlite and we don't have its list of assets with us," a special bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S H Kapadia said.

Vedanta Alumina can withdraw from the arrangement any time and its operating profits were negligible, it said. As per Vedanta's website, its profits from aluminium segment were just Rs 455 crore, the court said, adding, "it did not have the accounts of Vedanta and thus cannot take the risk of handing over the project".

While reading the order, Justice Kapadia cited newspaper reports and referred to the Government of Norway's decision to ban Vedanta for non-compliance of forest and labour laws.

However, the bench gave liberty to Sterlite Industries India Ltd to move the court within eight weeks if it was ready to go ahead with the project subject to compliance with certain modalities.

The Orissa government in collaboration with Orissa Mining Corporation and Sterlite will have to set up a special purpose vehicle to develop the scheduled area.

While Vedanta Alumina is not listed on Indian bourses, Sterlite is present on both Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange. Sterlite scrip rose 4.6 per cent on the BSE today to settle at Rs 879.10 in an overall bullish market.

Source : PTI