The meeting called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today to hammer out a consensus on the grant of environmental clearances for power, coal and steel projects has been postponed.
"The meeting which was to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today has been postponed," an official in the Coal Ministry told PTI.
Streamlining the process for granting forestry and environment clearance to enable new projects to take off quickly and fixing a maximum time limit of 150 days for such approvals were expected to be the main items on the agenda for the high-level meeting, according to sources.
The other issues were likely to come up for discussion in the meeting convened by the Prime Minister include seeking cooperation from coal-producing states to address problems relating to land acquisition, rehabilitation and law and order.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests is at loggerheads with the ministries of coal, power and steel over the grant of statutory environmental and forestry clearances to projects in areas situated in dense forests, which it has classified as 'no go' zones.
While the Environment Ministry has insisted that green concerns trump the need for infrastructure projects, its counterparts have railed against projects of vital importance to the economy being stonewalled.
A Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been grappling with the inter-ministerial tussle over 'go' and 'no-go' mining areas, as classified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
The GoM met twice, in February and April, to try and resolve the differences between ministries, but with little success as the Environment Ministry has refused to modify its stance.
The ministers who were to attend this meeting convened by the Prime Minister include Mukherjee, Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
The demand-supply gap for coal in the current fiscal has been estimated at 142 million tonne by the Planning Commission.
According to the Coal Ministry, the 'no go' mining policy has affected the potential production of 660 million tonne of coal per annum.