The National Green Tribunal’s southern zone bench in Chennai has recommended that the State-Level Environment Impact Assessment Authorities (SEIAAs) be brought under the direct administrative control of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) to avoid the “eagerness” shown by them to grant environment clearances to State government projects, without due diligence.
Judicial Member Pushpa Sathyanarayana and expert member Satyagopal Korlapati have made the recommendation after observing that they had come across many cases where SEIAAs had granted environment clearances without undertaking a critical scrutiny. “This can have a serious and long lasting impact on the environment and defeat the very purpose of Environment (Protection) Act, 1986,” they wrote.
The bench said, in most cases, the SEIAAs tend to trust the misleading information provided by the project proponents (State government departments) on their face value and end up considering B1 category projects under the B2 category thereby dispensing with the requirement of undertaking environmental impact assessments and conducting public hearings before granting the environment clearance.
Similarly, instead of letting the MoEFCC take a call on ‘A’ category projects, such as those involving inter-State rivers, the SEIAAs end up considering them under the B1 category. “This tribunal considers that such a situation arises because the SEIAAs function under the direct supervision of the State Governments. Therefore, the MoEFCC may examine the possibility of bringing the SEIAAs under its direct administrative control,” the bench said.
The recommendation was made while setting aside the environment clearance granted by SEIAA-Andhra Pradesh for the construction of the Avulapalli Balancing Reservoir in two phases. “It is extremely disturbing to note that a government department, in gross violation of the environmental laws, can go to the extent of implementing an irrigation project by resorting to falsehood, misrepresentation and cheating the SEIAA,” the bench wrote.
It also held the SEIAA guilty of having miserably failed in its duty to see that the project had been categorised wrongly by the project proponent. The bench criticised the SEIAA for attempting to mislead the tribunal, in its bid to justify the grant of EC, by claiming the project proponent had informed it of the decision to implement the reservoir project in two phases though that was not the case.
