The Sunday Guardian: New
Delhi: Sunday, 23 July 2017.
Over
700 important projects are pending environmental clearances from the Ministry
of Environment, Forest and Climate Change since the last three years, but the
Ministry is taking various measures to expedite such clearances, according to
information provided by the Ministry in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.
The
Sunday Guardian had filed an RTI to gets details of projects awaiting the
Ministry’s environmental clearances. Important projects pending environmental
clearances include several thermal power projects, hydro power projects, coal
mining, industrial and infrastructure development projects, among others, as
per the RTI reply received from the Ministry.
A
total of 10 thermal power projects of about 16,000 MW are pending clearances
before the Ministry to start their operations, according to the RTI reply
received by The Sunday Guardian. Among the important thermal power projects
waiting to start operations is the Super Critical Margherita coal-based thermal
power project of the Assam Power Generation Corporation Limited (APGCL). The
project is expected to generate 660 MW of power once it starts operations. The
2,400 MW thermal power project of the Odisha Thermal Power Corporation is also
pending environmental clearances and it is believed that this power project is
expected to bring much needed relief from the long power outages faced by Odisha.
A
total of 24 river valley and hydro electric power projects are pending
environmental clearances since 2014. However, the Ministry refused to divulge
details of such projects in the RTI filed by this newspaper.
The
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is yet to clear 434 projects
related to infrastructure and industrial development, that have been pending
before the Ministry since the last three years. Almost 210 non-coal mining
projects are also pending environmental clearances. Some of the non-coal mining
projects include gold mining projects in Karnataka and sand mining projects in
several rivers in the country, among many others. Not only this, the Ministry had also held up
over 450 requests for “forest clearances” from different states in 2016 alone,
while the Ministry rejected 50 such requests in the same year. In 2015, the
Ministry had rejected 136 forest clearance requests from states and in 2014,
129 such requests had been rejected.
In
2016, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh had made the highest number of
forest clearance requests to the Ministry. Even states from North-East have
been waiting for forest clearance sanctions to build roads and infrastructure
in the area. Arunachal Pradesh has six such requests pending to build roads for
connectivity to crucial areas; in Assam, a 245 km road is waiting for forest
clearance since the last two years, as per the RTI reply.
However,
the Ministry in its recent reply to the Lok Sabha said, “Different measures
taken by the government to expedite environment clearances include dedicated
on-line portal/facility for effective monitoring, standardisation of terms of
reference for preparation of EIA reports and the Environment Management Plan,
exemption from public consultations to certain projects/activities,
streamlining the procedures, etc. The Ministry has taken several initiatives
such as launching web portal for online submission and monitoring the status of
forest clearance proposals and delegation of powers to Regional Empowered
Committees (RECs) constituted at each Regional Office for final disposal of
proposals, involving diversion of 5 to 40 hectares of forest land (except the
proposals related to mining, regularisation of encroachments and hydel
projects).”
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