Green Tribunal Questions Move To Exempt Realty Projects From Environmental Clearance

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday took the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to task over its recent notification exempting real estate projects from obtaining prior environmental clearance and restrained it from granting any fresh permissions under the new regulation.

"You can't do legal blunders and get away with it," a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said as it pulled up the MoEF for not "applying its mind" while amending the notification published on December 9, 2016 exempting building and construction projects of all sizes from the process of environment impact assessment (EIA) and prior environmental clearance before beginning construction.

For smaller projects (less than 20,000 square metres), it even has a "self-declaration" clause, which will ensure issuance of permission from urban local bodies.

For larger projects of more than 20,000 square metres size, the EC and building permission will be given by urban local bodies simultaneously in an "integrated format".

"Why don't you (MoEF) do something constructive for the system. There is a way of doing things.We don't understand why do you do these funny things....

"If you wanted to amend the notification, you could have simply said that though the new projects are not required to take environmental clearance, but each project when cleared by local authorities would have certain conditions imposed on it. You tell your ministry and all others not to act under the new notification, otherwise we will stay the notification. You can't do legal blunders and get away with it," the bench said while granting liberty to the petitioners to approach NGT if a single permission is granted under the new notification.

The matter is now listed for next hearing on January 12.

The green panel had earlier refused to stay the December 9 notification by MoEF and issued notices to the ministries of Environment and Forests and Urban Development while seeking their reply before January 4, 2017.

The tribunal was hearing a plea filed by Society for Protection of Environment and Biodiversity seeking quashing of the December 9 notification on the grounds that it was in contravention to the provisions of EIA notification, 2006 and Environment Protection Act, 1986.

The plea had alleged that the notification tries to "circumvent" the provisions of the EIA Notification, 2006 in the name of "ease of doing business" for building and construction of areas which are more than 20,000 sqm and less than 150,000 sqm wherein prior clearance was required earlier.

The petition said the purpose of including the building and construction projects in the EIA notification is a failure of the urban local bodies and development authorities.