MUMBAI: Supreme Court has stayed a recent notification by the Centre placing certain projects out of the purview of prior clearance under the environment impact assessment norms and issued notice to the environment ministry on a public interest litigation (PIL), reports Swati Deshpande.
NGO Vanashakti had on Feb 16 moved the PIL, saying the notification significantly diluted the stringent environmental clearances (EC) regime. It sought quashing of a Jan 29 notification by the Union ministry of environment, forests and climate change doing away with mandatory prior EC for construction projects with a built-up area up to 1,50,000 sq m in cases of industrial sheds, and school, college and hostel for educational institutions.
The PIL filed in SC by an NGO against the Centre’s move exempting certain projects from prior green nod also challenged a Jan 30 memorandum which clarified that educational institutions would include private technical institutions, professional academies, universities along with warehouses, industrial sheds, housing machinery etc.
The SC bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan on Monday heard senior counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan for the NGO and issued notice to Centre. The next hearing is on March 28. The SC order said, “In the meanwhile, there will be stay of operation and implementation of the notification dated 29th January, 2025 as well as office memorandum dated 30th January, 2025.”
The new notification excludes all such projects from the purview of environment impact assessment or EIA, 2006 as against the current criteria, which requires prior EC for all building and construction projects having a built-up area above 20,000 sq m. The PIL said, “General conditions have been made inapplicable to building construction projects thereby seriously affecting the process of appraisal of all such projects in eco-sensitive areas, protected areas under Wildlife Act, critically and severally polluted areas and projects located at inter-state boundaries.”
If the new notification is enforced, it “would potentially destroy the land, water and air environment and ecology due to unregulated construction activities which would have a disastrous effect leaving a magnitude of environmental footprint that would be impossible to determine and reverse,” said the PIL, stressing that a built-up area of 20,000 sq m is itself a fairly large size of 2.16 lakh sq ft, but the new, higher cut-off would mean 16 lakh sq ft of construction would not need any prior EC. The notification would have done away with the need for prior EC for a large number of projects in Mumbai, legal experts said.