Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s flip-flop regime has been given a quiet bural with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stating that an independent regulator will soon revamp the process of granting environmental clearances to major projects without bring back “the hated licence permit raj of the pre-1991 period”.
A National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority (NEAMA) would be set up staffed by professionals, whose decisions would be subject to scrutiny, the Prime Minister declared while speaking at a seminar on Global Environment and Disaster Management: Law and Society.
The move to establish this authority appears to have come in the wake of stalling of several industrial and mining projects after the environment ministry, till recently led by Jairam Ramesh, had refused to clear the project.
Dr Singh also hailed the new “comprehensive law” which established a specialised tribunal for settlement of a “broad spectrum of environmental cases of civil nature”.
By doing so “we have joined a handful of forward looking countries to have such a dedicated mechanism. This (green ) tribunal has started functioning and I expect it will help to reduce the workload of our courts,” he said.
Dr Singh claimed that in the last four years, the government has formulated a national agenda for environmental protection to meet the challenges of disaster management and climate change.
“Our mission for sustainable habitat will develop standards for green buildings which we intend to make integral to our municipal laws,” he said.
The UPA-II government has a target for greening 10 million hectares of forest land to increase incomes of the poor through a national Green India Mission.
Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, who was presiding over the function, regretted that on many occasions PILs are being filed after plants and building projects were completed. “This results in large amounts of investment being thrown out,” he said.
Justice Kapadia further regretted that village bodies often granted NOCs under the Environment Protection Act but these were then taken back.
“It becomes difficult to deal with this kind of problem,” he said.
Commenting specifically on the controversial issue of mining, the Chief Justice demanded the setting up of a regulatory mechanism that would thoroughly appraise the project and also ensure proper pricing.
“We can not depend just on the report of the project proponent nor can the MoEF alone be allowed to okay an object,” he said, insisting that “excavated minerals should be judged, auctioned and have a price determining mechanism”.
“The ad valorem royalty is not considered which results in public sector companies earning less profit margins while private companies earn huge profit margin because of differences between the royalties they pay to the government and the amount they realise abroad. This has resulted in illegal mining taking place in many states,” he added.