Post clearance info on site, CIC to environment ministry

Hurt by lack of transparency in environment clearance process, the Central Information Commission has directed the Environment ministry to place entire information about project clearances on its website by April.

Updated on: Jan 19, 2012, 23:33:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Hurt by lack of transparency in environment clearance process, the Central Information Commission has directed the Environment ministry to place entire information about project clearances on its website by April.

The environment ministry has a webpage for displaying the minutes of the Expert Appraisal Committees (EAC) constituted for different sectors to examine projects. The page could be accessed mostly during office hours as National Information Centre has not provided 24 into 7 server facility.

However, information related to public hearing, inspection reports of the committee, special studied done to gauge environment impact and monitoring reports submitted once the project is cleared are not placed in public domain.

The information logjam may end as the order of information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi would puts the onus on the ministry to reduce burden of Right To Information applications by placing more information suo motto in public domain.

”The RTI Act envisions that all citizens should receive information by suo motto disclosures as prescribed under section (4) of the Act…disclosure is crucial to ensure transparency and accountability in institutions,” Gandhi said in his order.

Giving direction under section 19 of the RTI Act, the CIC asked Public Information Officer Sanchita Jindal to submit a compliance report by April 10. Jindal has assured the commission that access to the data will be available around the clock within three months.

The CIC has asked the ministry to provide five types of additional information on its website. It includes application of the project proponent, additional information submitted to EAC, reports commissioned by EAC from independent agencies, monitoring reports and information related to regional offices of the ministry.

The commission has also asked the ministry to direct the State Pollution Control Boards to display similar information on their websites.

The directions were issued on a complaint filed by Greater Kailash Shibani Ghosh, who found vital information related to project clearance missing from the ministry’s website. They also made concrete suggestions on how to improve transparency in project clearance process which was discussed with Jindal and other ministry officials and an agreement was reached.

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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