Environment violations come under 2 categories

An environment ministry committee has categorised serious and non-serious environmental violations to prevent uncertainty over projects such as posh housing project of Lavasa Corporation and has recommended additional conditions for environmental clearance. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 2, 2011, 01:23:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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An environment ministry committee has categorised serious and non-serious environmental violations to prevent uncertainty over projects such as posh housing project of Lavasa Corporation and has recommended additional conditions for environmental clearance.

The committee had said that all conditions listed in the environment clearance letter issued to the project proponent should be considered "serious" and any violation of it should mean time-bound action against the violator.

There have been cases where the environment ministry or the state government level regulatory authorities have taken years to decide on cases of violation of environment clearance conditions.

The government can impose as many conditions as it wants while giving environment clearance to the projects and initiate action against the violators under the Environment Protection Act. Over 30 environment conditions were imposed for construction of a new airport at Navi Mumbai and several mining projects approved in different parts of the country.

Leaving very less for bureaucratic interpretation, the committee headed by former member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) B Sengupta wants the government to have powers to close an industry believed to be immediate threat to public life and property.

To make environmental clearance conditions effective the committee wants that the process of show-cause notice and its reply should be finished in a limited timeframe. "Decision on the basis of the reply received from the industry by Competent Authority within stipulated timeframe," the committee said in its report submitted to the ministry.

The committee had also said that failure to develop the stipulated green belt before the commencement of the project, provide enough protection to wildlife and implement relief and rehabilitation package should be considered a serious violation.

The non-serious violations can be condoned after charging a penalty, the committee said.

In addition, the committee has also suggested a set of new environment conditions should be imposed in every sector while approving projects. It includes mandatory use of fly-ash in the cement industry and installing of clean and efficient technologies.

The recommendations come at the time when the environment ministry is under flak for failure to implement its own environment clearance conditions and there was no clarity on initiating action against the violators.

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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