Centre likely to declare Adarsh illegal

The environment ministry has sought more information from the Maharashtra government on approvals given to the Adarsh building complex before taking a decision in it.

Updated on: Nov 12, 2010, 24:26:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has sought more information from the Maharashtra government on approvals given to the Adarsh building complex before taking a decision in it.

The ministry is likely to issue a show-cause notice declaring the building illegal by Monday.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh wants to examine the entire chain of officials involved in giving the approval to the building complex in Colaba before taking a decision.

As per the information available with the ministry, the Adarsh complex in Mumbai is illegal as it did not have requisite approval under the coastal zone regulation (CRZ).

The ministry is also likely to ask the Maharashtra urban development department to issue a demolition order for 26 of the 31 storeys. But before that the minister wants to find out how the building came up without requisite CRZ approval.

The ministry's coastal regulation zone division on Thursday sought more documents from the state's urban development department. Neither the ministry nor the state's environment department gave approval.

"The urban development department's approval to the building violates the coastal regulation law," a ministry official said. The department cannot give approval to the building unless a no-objection is issued by the state coastal zone management authority.

Ramesh refused to comment but said that more information had been sought from the urban development department.

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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