After the public feuding over Bt brinjal, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh is at the centre of another policy dispute with ministries of road transport and commerce for holding up critical development and industrial projects.
Among the projects held up for clearance is a highway construction through Pench tiger reserve, part of which covers Chindwara, the constituency of Road Transport and Highways Minister Kamal Nath.
The commerce ministry has proposed easy clearances for industrial project in special zones. A discussion paper put out by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion suggests that industries that come up inside the proposed national manufacturing and investment zones should need no forest licences if they are just clearing bushes instead of felling trees.
“Ninety-nine per cent of the highway projects have been cleared. Only projects that go through Pench and Kaziranga (both tiger reserves) have been held up,” said Ramesh. Ramesh added that Kamal Nath had brought in a project for a six-lane highway for Cabinet approval without even holding a public hearing. Under the Environment Protection Act, public hearings are a critical part of getting a clearance.
Kamal Nath, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently, had said the time-consuming process of securing environmental clearance was holding up development projects.
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma refused to discuss the issue. “It has nothing to do with my ministry. If there are any inter-ministerial matters, they are best discussed in the Cabinet,” he said. Kamal Nath was not available for comments.
On Wednesday, Ramesh held a press conference where he defended his decision not to fast-track environmental clearances. He said about 95 per cent of the projects seeking environmental clearances had been approved and some 85 per cent of the proposals seeking forestry clearances were also cleared. There were 67 proposals seeking forestry approvals. Proposals from sectors such as steel, coal and thermal energy dominated the project list seeking approvals, he told reporters.
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Talking to Business Standard, Ramesh said there was generally no concern for environmental clearance. He said there were instances where the PM had been invited to lay the foundation for a project which did not even have environmental clearance. “I object to being presented a fait accompli,” he said.
In fact, he said, he was making all possible concessions to make clearances easier. For instance, he said in cases where projects had been brought to the Cabinet for approval, he would not stop them. But the Cabinet would not approve on-site expenditure until such time that they (the projects) get an environmental clearance.
The last public sparring involving Ramesh had taken place over the issue of stopping the commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal, the genetically modified version of the vegetable, by the environment ministry. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had written to the Prime Minister urging his intervention. Minister for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan and Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal had aligned with Pawar on the issue.
Ramesh also took a serious view of coal projects being sanctioned in dense forest areas. A detailed mapping had been done of some of the coal mines with the help of the Forest Survey of India. Ramesh said he wanted the ministry to be involved in the early stages of the coal block allocation process. “Go areas are those where mining could be permitted, while no-go areas are those forest areas where mining is prohibited,” he added.
The government has decided to shelve two hydel power projects — the 381-Mw Bhaironghati project and the 480-Mw Pala Meneri project on river Bhagirathi in Uttarakhand — and suspend work on the 600-Mw Loharinag Pala in the state. A five-member panel comprising the Central Water Commission, Indian Institute of Technology, NTPC and the environment ministry has been set up to study the possible impact of abandoning the Loharinag Pala project midway.