Jairam on project clearance spree

After holding up several high-profile development projects through 2010, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has, in just the single month of January 2011, cleared eight of them, including a mining project in a forest region his own ministry had earlier demarcated as a ‘no-go’ region. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 5, 2011, 01:07:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After holding up several high-profile development projects through 2010, environment minister Jairam Ramesh has, in just the single month of January 2011, cleared eight of them, including a mining project in a forest region his own ministry had earlier demarcated as a ‘no-go’ region.

Ramesh’s metamorphosis comes following repeated rebukes from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, publicly and privately, telling him that his environmentalist overdrive was adversely affecting development.

While his clearance of Posco’s Orissa project made headlines, Ramesh has also quietly okayed coal mining in a ‘no-go’ area in the same state, to provide the coal for a 4,000 MW Ultra Mega Power Plant at nearby Talchar. “Half of the mining area for which approval has been granted falls in a ‘no-go’ zone,” a government official said, claiming it was the first project approved in a ‘no-go’ area.

"We have adopted a transparent and balanced approach while clearing the projects. There is nothing unusual,” Ramesh told HT.

In January, Ramesh also cleared the Lavasa Lake City Project near Pune, which his ministry had stalled earlier, after imposing additional conditions. He has also conveyed ‘in principle’ approval — though the official sanction is awaited —for a ropeway project in the Girnair wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat, which had been held up for over two years following protests by wildlife experts.

"The rope-way if constructed will lead to the local extinction of the already endangered long-billed vultures," says a dissent note by two members of the standing committee of the National Wildlife Board, Divyabhanusinh Chavda and Nita Shah.

"Various alternatives are being considered," Ramesh told HT while discussing the ropeway project.

Yet another project okayed has been the Subarnarekha Multi Purpose Irrigation Project in Jharkhand, held up for over a decade following concerns expressed by conservationists. Ramesh has also agreed to approve a coal mining project in the Mahanadhi zone in Orissa, and another in Jharkhand.

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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