State approvals hold up Rs 2 lakh cr projects

About Rs 2,00,000 crore worth of key infrastructure projects are stuck due to delay in receiving state approvals.

Updated on: Dec 27, 2013, 01:21:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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About Rs 2,00,000 crore worth of key infrastructure projects are stuck due to delay in receiving state approvals.

Of the 107 projects cited by the Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) as been delayed because of environmental reasons, about 103 are related to issues concerned state governments.

“We have asked the states to process these projects and most of them are related to diversion of forestland,” an official said.

The number of projects approved by the environment ministry in 2013 is 50% more compared to the previous year. In fact, only four projects are stuck for want of environmental or forest clearance, ministry sources said. Of them, three are hydro electricity projects situated in the north-east including Tipaimukh project in Manipur. "We cannot allow these hydro projects as it would result in huge destruction of forests," a ministry functionary said.

About one-forth of these projects were held back due to delay in land acquisition by state governments, ministry officials said.

Where land acquisition process has taken place, delay in holding mandatory public hearing has been a major reason for holding back of environmental approvals. Approval of two-third of the village body in forest areas is a must for securing clearance from the environment ministry. The number of such projects is one-fifth of the total projects delayed.

The state governments have also found it difficult to meet the environment ministry’s guideline of the Forest Rights Act, which stipulates that right of forest dwellers should be met before diversion of such land for projects.

The environment ministry has cleared as many as 356 projects worth Rs 5,60,000 crore in six different categories in the first 11 months of the current year. The ministry diverted 17,134 hectares of forest land in first 8 months of 2013, 30% more than previous year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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