PM steps in to end tiff between Anand, Jayanthi

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to intervene to end a tiff between commerce minister Anand Sharma and environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan over the proposed manufacturing policy at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Sep 16, 2011, 01:13:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to intervene to end a tiff between commerce minister Anand Sharma and environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan over the proposed manufacturing policy at Thursday’s Cabinet meeting.

Singh reportedly asked Sharma to restrain more than once when the commerce minister went on offensive against the Natarajan, who was inducted as a minister of state for independent charge in July this year.

Sharma went to the extent of saying that Natarajan was oblivious of environmental norms and the policy, sources familiar with the developments said.

It all started when Natarajan reportedly opposed the provision in the policy which sought delegation of environment clearance powers to chief executive officer of the proposed National Manufacturing and Industrial Zones (NMIZ) to operate in 2,500 acres.

Her objection to the provision was on the basis that such delegation of powers would require an amendment to Water and Air Acts and will also open the policy to judicial review in wake of recent court judgments. The powers to give environment clearance are with the central and the state governments depending on scope of the project.

Sources said Sharma reportedly hit back at the young minister by saying that her predecessor Jairam Ramesh, who was also present, had no objections and she had not read the policy document properly. Ramesh remained silent.

Natarajan’s view delegating clearance powers to CEO of the zone would amount to conflict of interest found support from defence minister A K Antony and railway minister Dinesh Trivedi, who also spoke against some other aspects of the policy.

Antony reportedly opposed the concept which promoted industry at the cost of environment and labour laws.

Labour minister Mallikarjun Kharge, who was not present at the meeting due to foreign tour, issued a note opposing the policy saying it attempts to bypass labour laws and violates the provisions of the International Labour Organisation. The minister also had reservations regarding the proposed exit policy for the industry.

Sharma had support of social justice minister Mukul Wasnik and small and medium industries minister Virbhadra Singh, provided 45 % of the units are reserved for small and medium industries.

With many differing voices the Prime Minister decided to refer the policy to a GoM.

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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