Adarsh may be declared illegal over violations

The environment ministry has found Adarsh housing society’s argument that environment clearance for the project was not required flawed.

Updated on: Jan 13, 2011, 01:51:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry has found Adarsh housing society’s argument that environment clearance for the project was not required flawed.

As a consequence, there is opinion in the ministry that the building be declared illegal on grounds that it did not obtain environment clearance as required under the Coastal Zone Regulation, 1991. And, its implication could be directions to the state to demolish unauthorised parts of the building. Of the 31 storeys, only six are allowed as per CRZ 1991, sources said.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh will take the final decision on the illegality found by the ministry. An announcement is expected by the end of the week. The environment and CRZ division of the ministry has found Adarsh society guilty of two violations — it failed to seek CRZ clearance as directed by the environment ministry and the FSI of the building was higher than stipulated in the CRZ regulations.

Admitting it had not taken the ministry’s approval, the society said it was not required as CRZ regulations were applicable only for industrial projects requiring waterfront and offshore facilities.

The ministry has cited the CRZ notification of 1997, which delegated powers to approve residential projects in coastal areas to states.

Subsequently, in 2003, the 1997 order was cancelled after alleged misuse of delegated powers.

Both the ministry and state said the society’s claim it received a no-objection certificate from the ministry in 2003 was “totally wrong”. It was a letter allowing change in land use and not for construction, a ministry official said.

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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