The Centre has decided that companies which got the 214 cancelled coal blocks in the recently concluded auctions will not have to take fresh environment clearance, thereby paving the way for quicker extraction of the mineral.
The Centre has decided that companies which got the 214 cancelled coal blocks in the recently concluded auctions will not have to take fresh environment clearance, thereby paving the way for quicker extraction of the mineral.
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The environment ministry has brought a major change in rules without seeking comments from public saying it was not needed in “public interest” to transfer environment clearance to new coal block allottees without any additional conditions as desired by the coal ministry.
The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2006 had prohibited transfer of environment clearance on the ground that the project proponent, which conducts the EIA studies, was responsible for meeting the conditions stipulated while giving green approval to the project.
During appraisal, the project proponent is required to make commitments which are mentioned in the final order, thereby making transfer of environmental clearance non-negotiable.
Using its powers under the Environment Protection Act, the ministry has amended the rule saying the environment clearance granted to coal blocks whose allotment has been cancelled in any “legal proceedings or by the government” may be transferred to the new allottee.
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The transfer will be automatic as the new allottees will not have to take “no objection” either from the holder of the environment clearance or from any regulatory authority. “...no reference shall be made to the Expert Appraisal Committee or the State Level Expert Appraisal Committee concerned,” the notification issued last week said.
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The transfer will be automatic as the new allottees will not have to take “no objection” either from the holder of the environment clearance or from any regulatory authority. “...no reference shall be made to the Expert Appraisal Committee or the State Level Expert Appraisal Committee concerned,” the notification issued last week said.
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The beneficiary of the rule change would be companies which got 214 coal blocks that were cancelled by the Supreme Court in September 2014. The validity of the environment clearance for mining projects is up to 30 years and these coal blocks were granted green approval after 1991.
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.
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