Indian officials survey land around Tata iPhone plant after water pollution reports

HOSUR, India - Indian officials stepped up government checks on farmland surrounding Apple supplier Tata's iPhone parts factory near Bengaluru on Monday, after Reuters reported state authorities found discharge from the plant had contaminated groundwater.

Tata Electronics is central to Apple's push to diversify iPhone making beyond China. The plant facing scrutiny is located in Hosur, 25 miles south of tech hub Bengaluru, and makes back panels and other components for iPhones.

The southern Tamil Nadu state's pollution body has warned Tata of a forced shutdown unless it explains why the body's inspections between December 2025 and May 2026 found that wastewater discharge was affecting open wells in adjacent agricultural lands, Reuters reported on Saturday.

Tata says its independent analysis determined it was in compliance with regulatory norms and it was "committed to responsible business practices and protection of the environment and local communities."

Reuters reporters on Monday saw a team of three district administration officials, who oversee agricultural land issues, surveying the fields, walking behind the Tata factory with farmers who had expressed concerns about alleged water odor and contamination due to discharge from the factory.

"We are here to assess the situation," district official N. Velu told Reuters, declining to elaborate.

One farmer near the Tata plant, P. Pushparaj, told Reuters on Monday he had filed a complaint with authorities after observing discharge from the plant was "dirty and had a bad smell", adding he suspected it affected his crops.

"We continued our agriculture, but we didn't get proper yields," he said.

Tata and Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters queries. Reuters is first to report on Monday's government scrutiny.

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The state pollution control body has said Tata discharged wastewater into a rainwater harvesting pond inside its facility and that the pond overflowed to contaminate "groundwater in the open wells located in the adjacent agricultural lands".

The Tata notice adds to a series of issues that have dogged Apple's India supply chain. A fire at Tata's Hosur plant in September 2024 halted iPhone component production briefly, while a fire in September 2023 at former supplier Pegatron's iPhone plant shut production for days.

In 2024, a Reuters investigation found that major Apple supplier Foxconn systematically excluded married women from iPhone assembly jobs at one of its plants in India, although the company said at the time that it complied with all laws.

(Additional reporting and writing by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Susan Fenton)