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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Veerappa Moily rolls back Jayanthi Natarajan's decision on clearance for linear projects -Vikas Dhoot

Veerappa Moily rolls back Jayanthi Natarajan's decision on clearance for linear projects -Vikas Dhoot

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published Published on Jan 17, 2014   modified Modified on Jan 17, 2014
-The Economic Times


NEW DELHI: Environment and forest minister Veerappa Moily on Wednesday rolled back a major hurdle in the forest clearance process for projects like roads, transmission lines and pipelines that pass through villages and forest land, reintroduced in July 2013 by his predecessor Jayanthi Natarajan.

The environment ministry has clarified on January 15 that linear projects would be able to get a forest clearance without procuring the consent of all gram sabhas of villages that they pass through - one of the biggest factors delaying several investments as getting each village's approval is time consuming.

The environment ministry has clarified on January 15 that linear projects would be able to get a forest clearance without procuring the consent of all gram sabhas of villages that they pass through - one of the biggest factors delaying several investments as getting each village's approval is time consuming.

The Cabinet Committee on Investments, or CCI, had originally asked the environment ministry to ease these norms last January and the ministry had complied in February 2013, only to backtrack five months later. "The environment ministry has issued the necessary clarification to unravel this problem on Wednesday and informed the Cabinet about it," said a senior government official aware of the development.

Moily's decision, industry officials said, will smoothen the path for and expedite the execution of several linear projects across sectors like roads, power, irrigation, telecom and petroleum. "Investors have been red-flagging this problem with the powers that be in recent months and the CCI had even asked the environment ministry to issue a clarification that its July 5, 2013 guidelines shall not impact linear projects. But the ministry had failed to comply till last week," said a senior industry official, who didn't want to be identified owing to the sensitivity of the issue.

Specific projects like Indian Oil Corporation's Rs 31,000-crore refinery near Odisha's Paradip port and a Rs 7,300-crore cross-country oil pipeline being built over 1,738 km by a Gujarat State Petronet venture, among others, had also approached the CCI for a resolution of this deadlock.

The environment ministry had, in 2009, made it mandatory to get the consent of all the gram sabhas whose lands were involved in a project, in order to protect the rights of scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers under the 2006 Forest Rights law.

"Linear projects like roads and transmission lines generally pass through a large number of villages. A number of projects were getting delayed as obtaining consent of each gram sabha is time consuming," the CCI had noted in one of its first meetings after it was constituted in January 2013.

At a subsequent meeting last March, the CCI was informed that Natarajan had approved an official memo to resolve the problem, which was issued by the environment ministry on February 5, 2013. "Such linear projects are now exempt from obtaining the consent of gram sabhas provided that the rights of the primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities are not affected and and the state government has certified that all rights under the Forest Rights Act have been recognised and vested," the CCI noted in that meeting, adding this would "enormously reduce the time taken in obtaining forest clearances."

But investors like Indian Oil Corporation told the Centre that these onerous requirements under the Forest Rights Act had been 'reintroduced' by the green ministry through another circular about diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes issued on July 5, 2013. "Though the environment ministry had cross referenced the February guidelines in its July missive, it prescribed a particular format to be followed by linear and non-linear projects seeking forest clearances," said a government official aware of the development.

The format for linear projects required a certificate from the district collector that all relevant gram sabhas have consented to the diversion of forest land and the process of identifying and settling forest dwellers under the Forest Rights Act has been completed, which officials said rendered the ministry's earlier relaxation of these norms 'null and void.' "The July 2013 directive requires us to identify and settle the rights of forest dwellers on the forest land proposed for diversion and get all gram sabhas' approval," Indian Oil submitted to the CCI, arguing that this was in complete contrast to the February 2013 guideline issued by the environment ministry.

 


The Economic Times, 17 January, 2014, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/veerappa-moily-rolls-back-jayanthi-natarajans-decision-on-clearance-for-linear-projects/articleshow/289116


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