Realty projects get big boost, MoEF to now ease control
In a major boost to realty sector, the Centre has granted power to states to decide on new townships and construction and development projects, restricting the ministry of environment and forests to environmental sustainability aspects. Chetan Chauhan reports.
In a major boost to realty sector, the Centre has granted power to states to decide on new townships and construction and development projects, restricting the ministry of environment and forests to environmental sustainability aspects.
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This would apparently speed up the approval process and reduce duplication of work. On the flip side, the decision would clip the wings of state environment bodies as they would not be able to examine projects holistically.
The environment ministry had after much resistance got the power to examine all aspects of a project, including a township plan, but had to step down after protests by state governments like Kerala and Maharashtra.
The environment ministry had then issued an order, asking state environment impact assessment authorities not to assess projects on the basis of township plans, master plan or structural safety norms.
This decision was based on the recommendations of a panel on high-rise buildings headed by member planning commission K Kasturirangan.
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The panel said environment bodies should consider only environmental aspects for construction projects. “Otherwise, it leads to unnecessary duplication and undue delay,” a senior ministry official said.
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The panel said environment bodies should consider only environmental aspects for construction projects. “Otherwise, it leads to unnecessary duplication and undue delay,” a senior ministry official said.
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“The state-level authorities need not focus on other issues which are normally looked after by the concerned local bodies,” the ministry’s order said.
This includes fire safety of the building, its linkage with approach roads and provision of drinking water and electricity.
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.
