Rule relaxed to allow upto 50% expansion of coal projects

In a big relief to small coal mining projects, the government has allowed an expansion of existing projects up to 50% without any public hearing under the environmental appraisal process.

Updated on: Jan 13, 2014, 16:56:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a big relief to small coal mining projects, the government has allowed an expansion of existing projects up to 50% without any public hearing under the environmental appraisal process. The relaxation is only for coal mining projects with annual production of eight million tonnes or less.

The change in rule came last week to allow small coal miners to make maximum of environmental approvals given and to check delay in expanding the project.

The ministry in an office memorandum issued earlier this month said that it has decided to allow one time capacity expansion up to 50%, or incremental production of up to one metric tonnes per annum, whichever is more.

“The ministry of coal have taken up with the ministry, the case of smaller coal mining projects and have urged that the cap of capacity expansion up to 25% for such projects, as per the existing guidelines is inadequate as it results in relatively small increase in production,” the office memorandum said.

Although the coal ministry’s request came a few months ago, the ministry did not take a decision till Veerappa Moily took over. The minister exempted the rule of mandatory public hearing for such projects, curbing the participatory approach in environmental approval process.

The office memorandum also said for the projects having annual production of more than eight metric tonnes the relaxation will not apply. They would be allowed to expand up to 25% of the capacity without the mandatory public hearing as decided in December 2012.

The ministry had given a major relaxation in December 2012 after union minister Jairam Ramesh had made environment approval process mandatory for expansion of coal mining projects saying any expansion would impact the environment.

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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