PM asks plan panel to sort out mining rift

With coal and environment ministry caught in a battle over mining areas, a Planning Commission team will recommend a way out to Prime Minister’s Office in a fortnight.

Updated on: Jul 19, 2010, 23:39:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With coal and environment ministry caught in a battle over mining areas, a Planning Commission team will recommend a way out to Prime Minister’s Office in a fortnight.

The coal ministry has objected to the categorisation of ‘go and no-go’ areas of the environment ministry stating it would mean a loss 600 million tonnes of coal mining area, and will have a huge impact on the power generating capability.

In a bid to find a solution, PM Manmohan Singh had asked the commission to constitute a panel to make recommendations on fast tracking environment clearance and ensuring that India is able to utilise its mining resources.

The commission asked its member (infrastructure) B. K. Chaturvedi to work out a mechanism for maximum use of coal resources while keeping in mind environment sustainability.

“We will submit a report to PMO in a fortnight,” Chaturvedi said. The team has sought views of both ministries on fast tracking environment clearances and is also examining international practices in this regard.

PMO had earlier expressed unhappiness over environment ministry’s “go and no-go” categorisation for coal mining.

The panel agrees in principle with the concept of categorisation stating that most coal mining is done on forestland. “The question is how much area should be “no-go” without compromising on the country’s coal production,” a official 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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