The Punjab government and the union ministry of forests and environment are clearly headed for a showdown over environment clearances for mega infrastructure projects coming up in the state. At stake is an investment of nearly Rs.600 billion.
Chief minister Amarinder Singh has asked the Punjab pollution control board (PPCB) to issue provisional environment clearance certificates to all the mega projects coming up in the state.
The directions of the chief minister are in clear violation of an environment ministry notification to the PPCB that no provisional clearance certificates should be issued to projects costing over Rs.500 million.
The Punjab government has asked the central government to raise the limit of getting a no-objection certificate (NOC) for mega projects from Rs.500 million to Rs.2.5 billion.
The Amarinder Singh government, which faces assembly polls in February 2007, had been announcing mega projects in the housing, industrial and business (shopping malls and multiplexes) sectors.
Many of these projects - cashing on the property boom in Punjab - started construction immediately after the go ahead from the state government.
For the mandatory environment clearance and pollution certification, the owners of these projects got provisional clearance certificates from the PPCB without bothering for the actual clearance from the central ministry.
The central ministry intervened in April and asked the PPCB to cancel all provisional certificates and not to issue new ones. It also directed the Punjab government to ensure that no project came up without its clearance and work on existing projects be stopped immediately.
The ministry’s diktat led to a scare in the infrastructure sector, with investors running to the Punjab government for help.
Amarinder Singh, who had taken up the controversial issue with prime minister Manmohan Singh last week in New Delhi, immediately wrote a letter to the prime minister seeking his intervention.
He also wrote to federal forests and environment minister A Raja.
At the same time, he directed the PPCB to continue to issue provisional clearances for all mega projects saying that development could not be halted at this stage.
He said the state government should be allowed to clear projects that were not environmentally hazardous without waiting for the mandatory NOC from New Delhi.
Recently, the PPCB issued notices to seven colonizers who were not following environment and pollution norms. It warned them that construction activity would be disallowed if they did not adhere strictly to pollution control norms.
Posted By Staff Reporter
in Featured, Punjab News
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