Green norms go easy on projects

Looking for an image makeover, the environment ministry has eased green norms across most sectors - with some being in contradiction of its own stand in the Supreme Court. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 6, 2013, 01:50:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Looking for an image makeover, the environment ministry has eased green norms across most sectors - with some being in contradiction of its own stand in the Supreme Court.

The ministry on Tuesday exempted road, transmission and pipeline projects from seeking the consent of the gram sabha - a body of villagers -on the grounds that there was no rationale for seeking the approval of so many villages for such projects.

Shankar Gopalakrishnan of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity said the gram sabha's powers under the Forest Rights Act apply to any kind of project, and one cannot arbitrarily exempt some from them. "Better solutions exist to protect rights and ensure effective regulation than illegal exemption from the law," he said.

In fact, the ministry had filed an affidavit in the SC in the Vedanta case, stating that gram sabha consent is mandatory for every project where diversion of forest land takes place. It was on the basis of this view that the ministry issued a circular in 2009, making gram sabha consent mandatory for seeking forest clearance.

On the recommendation of a committee headed by Pulok Chatterji, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, and a letter from tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo, the ministry amended the 2009 circular - saying it would not be applicable for linear intrusion projects in forest areas.

The ministry also gave mining companies two years to seek clearance for forest land not approved for mining purposes, but part of the mining lease under the Mines and Minerals Development Act. This would probably allow companies to regularise the illegality in mining in forest areas not permitted by the ministry.

Rules for clearance and import of resource to coal-fired power plants were also eased as part of a slew of measures introduced by environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan to dispel the belief that the ministry was being a bottleneck for economic growth.

"Our mandate is to protect environment….but, industries are entitled for quick approval," she said.

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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