In fact, they said they did not expect anything otherwise as the Ministry had been made weak deliberately and was not capable of resisting the development lobby.
The Ministry had categorised the forests in 'go' and 'no go' zones, meaning that heavily forested areas would not be opened for diversion for coal mining, so they were 'no go' areas, whereas those with degraded forests could be considered for mining, and so they were 'go' areas.
His stand was meeting stiff resistance from the Coal and Power Ministries.
At the yesterday's meeting of the GoM, he offered that his Ministry would consider clearing applications for mining in both 'go' and 'no go' zones, and send the rejected projects to the Cabinet for a final decision.
But Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal is reported to have insisted that the entire categorisation should be done away with. However, it was after a joint survey of nine major coal fields carried out last year by the Coal and Environment Ministries, that the 'go' and 'no go' categorisation was made. Read the full report here.
Source: Central Chronicle, New Delhi.
