Changes in green laws will prove disastrous: Experts

Changes in green laws will prove disastrous: Experts
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Changes in green laws will prove disastrous: Experts, Environmentalists feel that the Ministry of Forests should not get involved in regulation and the job should be left to a quasi judicial body.

Hyderabad: Several environmentalists are up in arms against the Central government’s recently constituted committee to review the existing environment and forest laws in order to place project implementation above the government's obligation to conserve the environment under Article 48A.

Environmentalists feel that the Ministry of Forests should not get involved in regulation and the job should be left to a quasi judicial body.

They feel that Narendra Modi government which is on a fast track mode to encourage manufacturing units, thermal projects and ports is making all out efforts to give a go by to the environmental laws and appease the investors, both local and foreign.

Former Union Power Secretary and an environmental activist EAS Sharma said the existing environment impact assessment reports were not only unprofessional but, at times, fraudulent. The existing system of the promoter commissioning an EIA study and paying for it should go. EIA consultants should be selected at random by a qualified accrediting agency and payments to the consultant should be made from out of a fund created for the purpose. EAC's should have independent professionals and not retired civil servants.

“The committee should visit the industrial belt of Gujarat and see for itself the havoc played by unregulated industrial units on the health of the local communities,”' the former Secretary said.



The New York Times editorial appreciating the Supreme Court decision to cancel 214 coal blocks said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had shown little tolerance for what he perceived as environmental interference with his development agenda, Sharma added.

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