Easier green norms for real estate in offing

Sprawling high-rise buildings may not attract stringent green norms as the environment ministry is all set to relax rules in a bid to foster growth in a sector hit by high interest rates. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 25, 2013, 21:01:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Sprawling high-rise buildings may not attract stringent green norms as the environment ministry is all set to relax rules in a bid to foster growth in a sector hit by high interest rates.

The ministry will de-link height of the buildings that can come up on roads that have a certain width. The co-relation was prescribed by the ministry around a year ago, which resulted in strong protests by real estate companies which say it has slowed down many of their new projects.

The ministry had said a building between 15-30 metres high can come up on a road with minimum width of 15 metres. In case of buildings above 60 metres, the ministry prescribed the minimum road width of 30 metres.

The condition was stipulated on the basis of the recommendations of the ministry's expert appraisal committee (EAC) which said the link was necessary for quick help in case of any possible disasters.

The ministry, therefore, prescribed that no-objection certificate should be obtained from fire department at two stages - before construction and after occupation. It also wanted the project proponent to seek a no-objection certificate from the local disaster management authority.

"Demand for so many approvals has created an unnecessary licence raj (system)," a senior government official said, adding that the environment ministry is set to simplify the norms. Officials said the conditions prescribed in the February 2012 order had nothing to do with environmental management and therefore, was outside the domain of the ministry.

The ministry had constituted a committee headed by planning commission member K Kasturirangan to examine issues raised by real estate sector, and those relating to road widening projects and special economic zones.

Sources said the committee has agreed to remove the linkage provided that the buildings are safe and easily accessible for disaster management. It is also of the view that seeking fire clearance and approval for being disaster proof was the job of local municipal bodies, not the ministry.

The committee has been also asked to examine if the real estate sector should be exempted from environment clearance to avoid duplication as such projects are covered by local civic authorities and are under relevant master plan, building control regulation and safety regulations.

Many in the committee felt that such exemption would create an urban mess as most municipal bodies fail to appraise projects on environmental grounds. But they are of the view that ministry should not give clearance to the sectors covered under municipal laws.

The government source said the committee would provide ample scope to further ease green norms for road sector projects and special economic zones, which the government believes are necessary to attract investment. Probably, at the cost of environmental degradation.

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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