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This is an archive article published on May 22, 2016

Green project clearances now in 190 days not in 600 days: Prakash Javadekar

Javadekar said his ministry will soon come up with a booklet highlighting 50 projects across the country that remained pending for years.

Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar. (PTI Photo) Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar. (PTI Photo)

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar Sunday said that his ministry has brought down the time for environment project clearances to 190 days from the 600 days which was the norm during the UPA regime for 10 years. In two years of the Modi government, Javadekar said, his ministry has given approvals to 2000 projects.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Javadekar said, “Earlier for 10 years, the Minister was known as the obstructionist minister, blockade ministry and speed-breaker ministry. Now, we have changed the image of the ministry by ensuring that projects do not remained pending for years for want of environment clearances,” he said.

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The Environment Ministry, he said, has taken a number of steps to ensure that environment clearances are given without compromising on stringent pollution norms. “The delays have been down…It has been achieved by decentralising the process of giving clearances by getting up 10 regional offices. We have standardised the process of giving clearances by making them more transparent. The process has been made online,” he said, adding that ministry has also appointed a team of experts to assess the projects. “Therefore, we have been able to reduce the pending from 600 days to 190 days which was the norm during UPA regime. This will be further brought down to 100 days,” he said.

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All this, said Javadekar, has been made without compromising on pollution norms. “In fact, we have applied norms more stringently,” he said.

Javadekar said his ministry will soon come up with a booklet highlighting 50 projects across the country that remained pending for years. He cited the big-ticket projects like Coastal Road, NH 7 widening and Mumbai-Goa high widening, among others, in Maharashtra.

Javadekar also said that his ministry was promoting “forest land” concept in 200 municipal corporations in the country. “We will provide them Rs 2 crore and the amount will be increased to Rs 4 crore to promote the concept of forest land in the jurisdiction of  the municipal corporations,” he said.

About linking of Manjara river with Bhima river to ease water crisis in Marathwada, Javadekar said his ministry will fast-track the proposal if it comes from the state government.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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