After going through warmth for its transfer to rank State Environment Impact Assessment Authorities (SEIAA) based mostly on the velocity with which they approve proposals and grant environmental clearances for initiatives, the atmosphere ministry on Monday Said the transfer is aimed toward “encouraging efficiency, transparency”. and accountability within the functioning of SEIAAs” with out undermining any regulatory safeguards. It additionally stated that no SEIAA will probably be penalized for taking longer time to grant permission.
SEIAAs are liable for granting permissions and environmental clearances for over 90 % of infrastructure, developmental and industrial initiatives within the nation once they assess that these initiatives have little environmental affect.
On January 17, the ministry issued an order stating that it will fee SEIAs on seven completely different standards, which might display their effectivity. The choice was taken by the ministry after a gathering chaired by the Cabinet Secretary on November 13 final yr, which raised the difficulty of motion taken to allow “ease of doing business”, particularly “on time basis”. just about “Ranking of States”. approval”.
“The ministry has taken several initiatives to streamline the EC (environmental clearance) process and reduce the undue time taken in granting approvals…. As a step to encourage efficiency, transparency and accountability in the functioning of SEIAAs, the new rating of SEIAAs has been introduced,” the ministry stated in a press release.
“The rating system is predicated on the provisions of EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) Notification 2006 and varied tips issued by the Ministry every now and then and encourages SEIAs to boost their effectivity in choice making strictly as per the provisions of EIA Notification 2006. It is designed to undermine any regulatory safeguards. It is pertinent to notice that the EIA notification already supplies a timeframe for all EC procedures,” it stated.
“However, no negative marking is proposed for not meeting the criteria for ranking,” it stated. In case of shortfall in proposals, SEIAA might increase the Required Detail Demand (EDS) and the interval for which the reply is pending won’t be counted for computing the variety of days taken by SEIAA, the assertion stated.
“Therefore, SEIAA has complete freedom to do all necessary due diligence before taking a decision on the project without worrying about timelines,” including that there isn’t any query of compromising on the standard of EIA stories due to the rating system. Is.
As per the score system, if SEIAA’s common variety of days for grant of environmental clearance is lower than 80 days, it would get two factors, for greater than 105 days it would get one. If it’s between 105 and 120 days, the state authority will get 0.5 marks and if it takes greater than 120 days, it would get no marks.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
