Jairam admits conflict of interest in N-development

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday agreed that there was a conflict of interest in regulating nuclear radiation issues in India but said the government will have to take a final call depending on strategic and security issues involved. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 16, 2011, 23:43:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday agreed that there was a conflict of interest in regulating nuclear radiation issues in India but said the government will have to take a final call depending on strategic and security issues involved.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NCPIL) is entrusted with the job to set up nuclear plants in India whereas Atomic Energy Board is the regulatory looking at safety aspects and radiation related pollution.

Both these organizations are under the Department of Atomic Energy of the Central government.

This conflict of interest issue has cropped after independent experts questioned safety of Indian nuclear plants and future of 9,900 MW nuclear in Jaitapur in Maharashtra following radiation leaks in nuclear plants in Japan.

The radiation impact of the Jaitapur plant was not covered in the Environment Impact Assessment and is now being looked after by the Atomic Energy Board.

"We will review the environment clearance once board examines the radiation pollution aspect. Overall, safety of the plant is not the domain of my ministry," Ramesh said.

To make his point clear on regulatory conflict of interest Ramesh said the commissioner of Railway safety, who clears all rail projects including Delhi Metro, is under the administrative control of the civil aviation ministry and not railways.

Railways had wanted the commissioner to be under its administrative control but the government had rejected the idea for the last 40 years.

Last year, the government agreed with Ramesh on another area of conflict of interest when it transferred the administrative control of the proposed biotechnology regulator from the Department of Bio-Technology, whose mandate is to promote biotechnology, to the Department of Science and Technology.

The government has proposed an overarching regulator for the biotechnology sector including Genetically Modified crops to take the regulatory work away from the environment ministry. And, after initial resistance the government agreed with Ramesh.

Having a similar principle applicable for nuclear installations is not easy as there are not many experts on nuclear science outside the organizations under the Department of Atomic Energy.

But, many countries using nuclear power have an independent regulator for nuclear installations.

European Union has clear directive that the nuclear regulation should be independent of the utility settling up a nuclear installation.

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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