On Moily’s desk, pending projects worth Rs 1 lakh cr

Veerappa Moily may be required to take a quick call for clearing projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore stuck with the environment ministry in the next few days while trying to strike a delicate balance between economic growth and protecting the ecology.

Updated on: Dec 23, 2013, 23:35:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Veerappa Moily may be required to take a quick call for clearing projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore stuck with the environment ministry in the next few days while trying to strike a delicate balance between economic growth and protecting the ecology.

The new minister, who will take charge on Tuesday after he was given additional charge on Saturday, told Hindustan Times that he would take all aspects on environment into consideration after consulting his officials and will do what is best for environment and growth.

“I am not going to dramatically change the environment policy. I will first understand the regulations and then take appropriate action,” he said.

The minister refused to delve into the controversial issue of streamlining processes for clearing projects as the industry had been seeking for a long time. He wanted to ensure that the project approvals are given in a time-bound manner as stipulated under statutory regulations and fasten the file clearing process.

“Jayanthi Natarajan (his predecessor) did a lot of intelligent and good work and I will like to continue with the good work,” he said. However, the former environment minister Natarajan had come received a lot of flak from the industry for slowing down the environment clearance process.

The task ahead for Moily will not be easy as on one side there is proactive industry seeking quick clearances for projects and on the other is civil society with a hawk eye keeping vigil on every approval granted. This becomes more precarious in absence of adequate scientific studies on how to strike the balance between environment and growth and arbitrary powers granted to the minister in project approval.

The minister will also have to deal with judiciary which had questioned many environment ministry decisions on approvals. Off late, the ministry has been at a receiving end from National Green Tribunal (NGT) for giving approvals without proper appraisal.

Moily would be expected to have a re-look at the environment ministry’s decision to declare 37% of the area of Western Ghats as ecologically sensitive zone prohibiting some economic activities, for which it has received brickbats from Congress-ruled states like Kerala and Maharashtra. Already, chief ministers of the Western Ghats states have sought review of the regulation issued under pressure from the NGT.

An issue highlighted by Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on making environment approval transparent would also be high on Moily’s agenda. A proposal to set up an independent project approval appraisal and approval body for transparency and participatory approach is pending in the ministry for the last three years.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.