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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | No green nod if EIA reports copied: MoEF

No green nod if EIA reports copied: MoEF

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published Published on Oct 7, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 7, 2011
-The Indian Express
 
Taking a tough stand on rampant plagiarism in the preparation of Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) reports, the Environment Ministry has decided to scrap any project whose impact-assessment report is found to be a “copy-paste” job from other reports.
EIA reports are a must to get mandatory ‘green clearances’ for projects. Project developers, which are mostly private firms, hire independent environmental consultants for the job. The decision to scrap such projects comes after the ministry found several instances of plagiarised EIAs, the order passed on Wednesday said.

“If at any stage it is observed or brought to our notice that the EIA report is copied from other EIA reports, such projects will be summarily rejected and the project proponents will have to carry out the entire process afresh, including public hearing,” said a senior ministry official.

The order also makes it clear that if green clearances are granted to projects whose impact assessment reports are found to be plagiarised at a later stage, such clearances will also be revoked.

This stems from the increasing concern that a large number of EIAs have been and still are simply ‘con-jobs’ prepared by consultants without due diligence.

“Now, the project developers will have to give an undertaking vouching for the originality of the reports and the consultant would be delisted,” he said.

The only catch in the new order is that the ministry has, however, not taken the responsibility of finding out on its own whether a submitted EIA report is plagiarised or not. “The onus of providing original report will lie with project proponents,” he said.

The concern regarding ‘fake’ EIA reports was raised by the National Green Tribunal last month when it quashed a clearance granted by the ministry to a mining project in Maharashtra after noting several discrepancies.

The tribunal order noted: “It is baffling to notice that the EIA consultant has no accountability whatsoever, even if he furnishes wrong information or insufficient information, which leads to wrong conclusions....”

One case of alleged plagiarism was Ashapura Minechem, a bauxite mining project in Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, wherein the report was said to be plagiarised from a project in Russia. Independent experts have been flagging this issue with the ministry for years.

“Plagiarism is a huge problem in the environmental clearance process. Project developers have always been getting away because they do not prepare the reports. But getting clearance on fake reports is criminal,” said Ritwik Dutta, an environmental activist and lawyer.


The Indian Express, 6 October, 2011, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/No-green-nod-if-EIA-reports-copied--MoEF/856263/


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