Green clearance within 15 days of advisory panel’s approval,directs PMO

The orders will have an impact on green nods for not only building construction,township and IT park projects but also construction of dams,expansion of highways and mining activities across the country. The advisory committees for environment and forests vet proposals to assess a project’s impact on the environment. Based on their report,clearance is issued by the Central Ministry of Environment and Forest (MOEF) or the concerned state level committee.

The real estate industry has always held that the environmental clearance should be done away with. “Right now,it takes anywhere between 6-12 months to get the clearance. Anyway how can a state or central level committee monitor the project at a local level?” said Sunil Mantri,president of the Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (MCHI).

Mantri also said it added to the interest on already high land costs taking the project cost up by Rs 50 to Rs 250 per sq ft. “We have been petitioning the PMO for the last two years asking them to scrap the environment clearance itself as it is unnecessary. We are grateful that at least the PMO has decided to speed up the process. When the new government comes to power,we are planning to approach them with the issue all over again,” said Mantri.

Two months ago,the MOEF had relaxed environmental clearance norms to exclude all building projects under 50,000 sq mts of built up area and townships less than 100 hectares from its purview.

“The clock starts ticking from the time developers invest in land. So if the environmental approval takes six months to come through,the interest rate on it goes up by 6 per cent. The whole exercise is meaningless when there is a master plan existing for the city,” said Pune-based developer Kumar Gera,chairman of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI).

He added that the issues dealt with in the clearance were important for sustainable development but then they should be incorporated into the Development Control rules instead of making it into another bureaucratic hurdle.