-IndianSpend.com Recent changes to Environment Clearance rules allow polluting industries to expand their operations and change their product mix without full central scrutiny. This may weaken the already poor compliance with environmental regulations and could even lead to industrial accidents like the 2020 Visakhapatnam gas leak, experts say. New Delhi: Recent changes in the Environment Clearance process for India's most polluting industries will allow them to expand their capacity and change their...

-Hindustan Times Earlier this week, the ministry released a user manual for online submission of an undertaking on no increase in pollution load due to expansion, on its Parivesh website. The environment ministry has allowed companies operating in several industries, including some polluting ones, to expand capacities on the basis of a self-certification that this will not “increase the pollution load”, creating the room for potential misdeclaration (and misuse), especially in light...

-Newsclick.in Vedanta has halted operations and appealed to the Supreme Court against an NGT order which held an environmental clearance as necessary for the purpose. New Delhi: Did the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Goa help Vedanta jump the law in order to sell iron ore overseas even as a state-wide ban continues to be imposed on its mining by an order of the Supreme Court of India? After purchasing 1.44 million...

-India.Mongabay.com * In its latest decision, the Indian government’s ministry of environment has come out with an order to help a certain category of mining projects avoid public hearing while seeking Environment Clearance. * This decision is mainly for projects which were granted Environment Clearance under environmental impact assessment notification 1994 after a public hearing was conducted. * But experts note that public hearings should be understood as a critical tool for good...

-Article-14.com In 2018, India diluted environmental safeguards when it ‘standardised’ or made simpler permissions for industry by expert panels. Now, as the government pushes the use of dirtier domestic coal by power plants, further dilution is underway, increasing health risks and imperilling the environment New Delhi: Standardised conditions will be “monitorable”. They will bring “uniformity”. They will help in “expediting the process of environmental clearance without compromising environmental norms”. These are claims the ministry of...