Seal Ennore ammonia terminal and pipeline, insists a PIL before Madras High Court

A public interest litigation (PIL) petition has been filed in the Madras High Court seeking a direction to the Centre as well as Tamil Nadu government to seal Coromandel International Limited’s (CIL) ammonia terminal and the subsea pipeline operations at Ennore in Chennai.

The High Court’s first Division Bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G. Arul Murugan is expected to hear the PIL petition, filed by former Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of Tiruvottiyur, K. Kuppan (71), on Monday (January 12, 2026).

The petitioner has also sought an interim direction, invoking the precautionary principle, to the private company to suspend ammonia transfer, storage and associated hazardous operations at its Ennore facility besides desisting from pre-cooling and movement through subsea pipelines.

He has further sought a direction to the Collectors of Chennai and Tiruvallur districts to forthwith disburse full compensation to the individuals who had suffered both short and long term losses in terms of health, livelihood and property during the 2023 ammonia gas leak from the undersea pipeline.

In his affidavit, the former MLA said, an undersea pipeline operated by CIL, for transporting liquid ammonia from the Ennore port to its fertilizer facility in Ennore, suffered damages on December 26, 2023. About 67 tonnes of ammonia got leaked within 15 minutes and none of the sensors were able to detect it on time.

Over 52 residents were hospitalised due to ammonia poisoning. They suffered acute eye irritation, respiratory distress and systemic complications because the chemical release exceeded safe concentration limits by five to ten times, the petitioner said provided measurement of the air and sea water samples.

He also claimed that information obtained by him, under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, had revealed approximately 1,860 fish belonging to 18 different species, all weighing 187 kg, had died across nine fishing villages located in the area due to the ammonia leak from the pipeline.

The government had ordered a temporary shutdown of the terminal and levied an environmental compensation of ₹5.92 crore on CIL after a technical inspection. Stating that levy of such a token amount was not sufficient, the petitioner insisted on sealing the ammonia terminal and the pipeline.

Drawing a parallel with the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, the former MLA said, Ennore exhibits the same pattern of aging infrastructure, failed safety systems, absence of early warning, location of a hazardous installation amidst dense settlements and a culture of corporate and regulatory negligence which, if unchecked, could lead to a catastrophe of far greater magnitude.

He also alleged that CIL was operating the ammonia terminal without a valid environmental/coastal regulatory zone (CRZ) clearance and without a consent-to-operate under the Water Act, for its post modification pipeline, despite being a red category hazardous industry. “The original 1995 CRZ clearance, granted to EID Parry (India) Ltd., did not cover the present undersea pipeline configuration that has long outlived its statutory validity. The attempt in 2025 to transfer that clearance to CIL, after the leak, is ex-facie ultra vires the 2006 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification which mandates a fresh CRZ clearance with full EIA, public hearing and contemporary risk assessment,” he added.