The National Green Tribunal has asked the environment ministry to notify all wetlands in the country to avoid developmental projects in its vicinity as it suspended environment clearance to the thermal power plant in Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh.
The National Green Tribunal has asked the environment ministry to notify all wetlands in the country to avoid developmental projects in its vicinity as it suspended environment clearance to the thermal power plant in Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh.
In an order issued on Wednesday, the tribunal also asked the ministry to finalise the guidelines and site criteria for Thermal Power Plants urgently. The tribunal had found that the existing guidelines had failed to take note of factors that affect the environment and ecology today.
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“It is pertinent to note that the siting criteria produced before us were framed 25 years ago,” the tribunal said, while hearing petitions by six locals against the 2,640 MW thermal power plant of Nagarajuna Construction Company.
The appellants in the case had alleged that the proposed project site was a wetland not suitable for commercial use. It will adversely affect irrigation schemes of the area and lead to scarcity of drinking water and fishing. They also said the project will stop farmers from growing seasonal crops and vegetables, and destroy a breeding area for migratory birds.
The petitioners also contended that the environment ministry didn’t consider objections raised by a majority of those affected.
The project proponents, however, said such claims were baseless and the site was not a notified wetland. The ministry said the project was cleared after taking into account all environmental aspects.
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The tribunal said that another opportunity should be provided to locals to express their views on the project and, till then, the approval should remain suspended.
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The tribunal said that another opportunity should be provided to locals to express their views on the project and, till then, the approval should remain suspended.
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The tribunal also suspended environment clearance to the 1,200 MW thermal power plant in the Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu.
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.
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