Ramesh offers to increase ‘go areas’ to 74%

A day before the Group of Ministers meeting on environment clearances, the Environment ministry has expressed willingness to increase the coal mining area to 74 % in 28 blocks, which fall in forests, as against 65% earlier. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 17, 2011, 24:54:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A day before the Group of Ministers meeting on environment clearances, the Environment ministry has expressed willingness to increase the coal mining area to 74 % in 28 blocks, which fall in forests, as against 65% earlier.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh is expected to inform the GoM that he was willing to allow coal mining in 28 coal blocks, which fall in 'No-Go' areas by redefining its boundaries.

This means that an additional 82,000 hectares of forest area would be available for coal mining. “Even if 80% of these 28 coal blocks (with redefined boundary) is shifted to go category, total 477 (81.95 %) coal blocks covering 4,46,000 ha (73.98 %) will be available for mining,” Ramesh had said, in a confidential note.

Agreeing that his ministry’s 'no-go' policy for coal mining was not legally enforceable, the minister has said the categorization was indicative to identify forest areas that can be considered for allowing coal mining, by causing least damage to forests and wildlife.

The ministry has not imposed any blockages, as claimed by the Coal ministry, for projects not falling in forest areas. The Expert Appraisal Committee is expected to consider 21 fresh coal mining projects at its next meeting on February 21.

The ministry has, however, ruled out any changes in criteria for identification of critically polluted areas to approve coal mining areas. In fact, the critically polluted areas identified on the basis of the Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) score is valid only for industrial clusters in urban areas and does not cover forests, where the coal bearing zones fall.

Of the 88 industrial clusters, 43 having a CEPI score of more than 70 were identified as critically polluted and a moratorium was imposed on allowing new industries there in January 2010, a ministry note on Wednesday said.

This comes after media reports that Environment minister Jairam Ramesh had agreed to increase the threshold limit to 75 on CEPI score to allow 16 coalmines.

Of the 43 industrial clusters, the ministry lifted the moratorium from five polluted areas --- in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat --- in October 2010, after the state governments submitted plans to deal with pollution.

On Wednesday, the moratorium was lifted from another eight critically polluted areas on basis of recommendations of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). They are Ludhiana (Punjab), Varanasi-Mirzapur and Agra (Uttar Pradesh), Bhavnagar (Gujarat), Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu) and Dombivalli, Aurangabad and Navin Mumbai (Maharashtra).

With regard to the moratorium in other areas, action plans of 25 industrial clusters are being verified and revised plans are been awaited for the remaining five. “Third party monitoring of these plans will be done,” the note said.

The note emphasized on Ramesh’s effort to allow industrial activity compliant with environmental laws, the issue to be discussed in the GoM headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee. Many colleagues of Ramesh such as Coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal, Power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Commerce minister Anand Sharma have opposed his environmental policies, accusing him of blocking development projects in name of protecting ecology.

The Environment minister is expected to set the record straight at the GoM meeting on Thursday by showcasing data that delay in environmental clearances is more because of incomplete documentation, rather than environmental activism.

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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