Sewage discharge to tree cover: CAG finds green norm violations in half the projects approved

Violations range from untreated sewage discharged to tree cover not maintained to violators not penalised

Updated on: Nov 4, 2019, 17:43:05 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan

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Illegal withdrawal of ground water, cutting trees without permission, and discharge of untreated waste water were some of the green norm violations by project proponents detected by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).

An open sewer littered with garbage near Velocity Cinema at Ring Road in Indore. Several project proponents not implementing basic conditions such as not discharging waste water without treatment were found. (Shankar Mourya/Hindustan Times)

“Environment clearances were granted to project proponents without checking compliance of conditions mentioned in previous environment clearances and recommendations of regional offices,” said the report tabled in Parliament on Friday.

Depicting several loopholes in the ministry’s approval process, the report, based on approval given to 4,534 projects between 2008 and 2015, accused the ministry of failing to monitor its own approvals conditions to protect the environment.

More than half of the requisites for approval termed as general and specific conditions were not met by project implementers and the ministry failed to take strict action against them, the report said, naming several public enterprises such as the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) as violators.

“No penalty has been imposed on even a single violator in the last two years,” was the stark remark of the government’s auditor in its first appraisal of the ministry’s environmental clearance process. It hauled the ministry up for failing to delegate penalty powers to its regional offices that monitor implementation of approval conditions.

Under the Environment Protection Act (EPA), the ministry is mandated to appraise and approve infrastructure projects and ensure that conditions imposed on project proponents to protect environment are met.

The National Democratic Alliance government has amended the green norms over a hundred times over the last two years in the name of ease of doing business for faster clearance. The process had caused heartburn within the government, with economic ministries blaming the environment ministry of blocking growth through a “long drawn” and “cumbersome” approval mechanism.

The CAG found that the environment had suffered at the cost of faster clearances, with several project proponents not implementing basic conditions such as not discharging waste water without treatment, replenishing ground water, and having adequate green belt around project sites.

The CAG also said the ministry had failed to appoint a national regulator to oversee the environmental clearance process as directed by the Supreme Court in 2011.

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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