All go-aheads not green: Ramesh

Controversial environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh sprang a surprise on Friday, admitting that he had cleared projects violating green norms under pressure and regretted the decisions. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 7, 2011, 01:19:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Controversial environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh sprang a surprise on Friday, admitting that he had cleared projects violating green norms under pressure and regretted the decisions.

"There is always pressure to clear. Sometimes it is natural pressure for development and sometimes otherwise," the minister told HT.

"There are some occasions when I have not compromised. On some occasions, I had to compromise."

Hours before speaking to HT, Ramesh gave a conditional clearance to the 400MW Maheshwar Dam project on the Narmada River in Madhya Pradesh following directions from the Prime Minister's Office despite tardy relief and rehabilitation work.

People from only one of the nine villages to be submerged have been relocated so far.

"I have no option but to agree to lifting the stop-work order on the construction of last five spillway gates," Ramesh said in the order granting approval to the dam project.

The minister's order referred to meetings at the PMO and calls he received from union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, asking him to clear the project.

Soon after the approval for the dam project was granted, NGO Narmada Bachao Andolan issued a statement accusing Ramesh of buckling under pressure.

"We have to say that he (Ramesh) is violating statutory conditions on dictation from above. It is shocking and shameful and is an open comment on the crony nature of the current governance in India," said Medha Patkar of the NBA.

Ramesh told HT that he had to refuse to take back environmental clearances to projects such as the Tatas' Damra port in Orissa and power plants in some states, knowing full well that green norms had been violated.

These projects were cleared before he took charge of the ministry and was asked to review the clearances.

"Unfortunately many times I am forced to regularise. Because I have no option, because a refinery or a steel plant is built," the minister said, adding that he was against regularising illegality.

Only in one case, Mumbai's Adarsh Housing Society, did the minister refuse to condone illegalities and ordered demolition of the 31-storey building in the posh Colaba area.

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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