Land acquisition no longer required for green approval

In a change in rules notified last week, the ministry said that documentary evidence to suggest that the process of land acquisition has started would be more than enough to appraise the project and grant environment clearance.

Updated on: Oct 14, 2014, 24:25:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Making green norms more business friendly, the environment ministry has now allowed project proponents to seek environment clearance without mandatory land acquisition.

In a change in rules notified last week, the ministry said that documentary evidence to suggest that the process of land acquisition has started would be more than enough to appraise the project and grant environment clearance.

The change became possible as the ministry opined that the environment clearance is site specific under the Environment Impact Assessment notification of 2006 and any change in the site would make the approval invalid.

“It may, however, be noted that the EC granted for a project on the basis of the aforesaid documents shall become invalid in case the actual land for the project site turns out to be different and mentioned in the EC,” the office memorandum issued with respect to land acquisition said.

The amendment in the rules was made after several infrastructure ministries and industry associations told the environment ministry that the condition was a cause for delay in project acquisition.

Considering the plea, the ministry said there should be some credible document to show the process of land acquisition has been initiated.

In another business friendly measure, the ministry has imposed a restriction on its Expert Appraisal Committee that recommends environment clearance from seeking more environmental studies at the time of final consideration of the project, called stage-II approval process.

The ministry said that the EAC should recommend environment studies at the time of approving the terms of reference for the project also called stage-I approval process. This condition was also imposed on suggestion of industry bodies.

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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