Modi sets agenda for green minister Prakash Javadekar
Sending a message to the business community that the NDA government was serious about removing “bottlenecks” to economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked environment minister Prakash Javadekar to clear half of the stuck projects in the next month.
Sending a message to the business community that the NDA government was serious about removing “bottlenecks” to economic growth, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked environment minister Prakash Javadekar to clear half of the stuck projects in the next month.
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Projects worth Rs 1,00,000 crore are awaiting approval of the new minister as no projects were approved since March 5 when the model code of conduct came into force. The new minister for environment, forest and climate change Javadekar is getting ready to clear these projects.
The projects range from mining for Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Lafarge’s mining projects in dense forest of Chhattisgarh, expansion of a mining project in fragile Western Ghats to Jindal Steel and Power’s limited’s in Maoist affected Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.
The minister is also expected to consider projects on thermal power in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Odisha along with some hydro power projects in the north-east. While many of these projects are in dense forest or rich ecological areas, they are not embroiled in any legal issues or caught in any controversy paving their way for clearance.
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“We have been asked to enlist the projects which are not highly contentious,” a government official said, hinting that they would be given priority in the approvals.
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“We have been asked to enlist the projects which are not highly contentious,” a government official said, hinting that they would be given priority in the approvals.
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The ministry is also working on ‘streamlining’ the environment clearance process which could translate into automatic approval for expansion of existing infrastructure projects like roads and rail. “No approval will be required if the road or rail project is getting expanded in its right of the way,” an official said.
Ministry officials are also keen to remove moratorium on adding new industries in some of the most polluted industrial areas such as Vapi and Ankleshwar in Gujarat. The restrictions in allowing high growth projects in dense forest areas would be reviewed by Javadekar next week, sources said.
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The proposals may not go down well with green activists who feel the environment ministry was working at cross purpose by pushing economic agenda of the government at the cost of sacrificing country’s ecological wealth.
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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