More forest land to be okayed for coal mining

The environment ministry will allow coal mining in additional 35,000 hectares of forestland in a bid to end its tug-of-war with coal ministry.

Updated on: Jul 7, 2010, 24:17:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry will allow coal mining in additional 35,000 hectares of forestland in a bid to end its tug-of-war with coal ministry.

Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh have been involved in a fiery exchange of letters over the “go” and “no go” areas for mining. The ministries had earlier categorised 3,44,000 hectares of forestland as “go areas”.

But the coal ministry retracted after mining firms resisted, saying this would mean 48 per cent of mining operations would not be undertaken.

“The domestic production that was expected to reach a level of 1,000 metric tonnes per annum (mtpa) by next decade will be pegged down to only 400 mtpa compared to our anticipated demand of 1,500 mtpa,” Jaiswal wrote to Ramesh, who said that increasing the “go areas” by 35 per cent would mean a huge loss of forest area.

On Jaiswal’s request, the environment ministry increased the permitted area to 3,80,000 hectares. But Ramesh said the rise in “go areas” does not mean automatic clearance.

However, the coal ministry officials do not agree to this reworked categorisation.“The environment ministry has offered us additional land but the proposal is not acceptable as we want at least 35 per cent increase in mining area,” a coal ministry official said. “We want a third option of “may go” areas in “no” go areas, which the environment has not accepted.”

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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