While around 71 per cent of the projects were cleared by state governments concerning projects under five hectares, the rest were cleared by regional offices of Ministry of Environment and Forests, she said. The Ministry of Environment cleared projects of 100 hectares size, she said, adding, all these were done within the mandatory period of less than a year and therefore there was no delay. On the Chaturvedi Committee, set up to examine the go and no-go system for coal mining, she said its report was a subject matter of a Group Of Ministers (GoM) but added her ministry had made some "very specific observations." The issue of go and no go was the request of the coal ministry and not the environment ministry, she said, adding, issues like forest clearance and rights of forest dwellers were important while giving clearances. On the mining issue in Bellary, she recalled that the Supreme Court had banned private miners from mining iron ore and termed as illegal mining what was going on there (earlier). The Apex Court had allowed state enterprise NMDC to mine iron ore to meet demands of the steel industry even as it banned private miners from extracting iron ore. Read the full report here.
Source: IBN Live, Chennai.
