CRZ breach: States told to give info

In a move to identify the extent of coastal violations, the environment ministry has asked the state governments to inform it about the violations and action taken against them under Coastal Regulations of 1991 within four months. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 27, 2011, 23:21:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a move to identify the extent of coastal violations, the environment ministry has asked the state governments to inform it about the violations and action taken against them under Coastal Regulations of 1991 within four months.

The decision came after the ministry ordered demolition of Adarsh Housing Society in Colaba, Mumbai, for alleged violations of the coastal regulations.

The direction has been issued under section 5 of the Environment Protection Act, which empowers the ministry to initiate action against the violator, if the state government fails to act.

Nalini Bhat, advisor with the ministry, said once the violations are identified the state governments are required to take action against the violators. The ministry has stipulated a period of four months for completing the entire exercise and report back.

In a bid to ensure that there is transparency, the ministry has directed the state governments to upload the relevant details of the identified violations, including the action taken against these violations.

The environment ministry is itself party in around 600 cases of coastal violations and it is believed that the number may be in several thousand.

The ministry has also made it clear that none of the violations will be condoned as new Coastal Regulation of 2011, replacing the 1991, has come into force. "Action will have to taken as per the older violation unless specified in the new rules," an official explained.

The ministry has advised the state governments to utilize satellite imagery to identify the violations on the lines of Goa government, which has submitted satellite proofs of the violations to Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation filed by Goa Foundation.

Number of violations has been reported in Mumbai, coastal towns in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. In some cases the state coastal zone management authorities have initiated action, officials said.

The National Coastal Zone Management Authority has sought help of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to get the coastal mapping done to identify the violations on the real time basis.

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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