The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to cope with environmental violations consists of stiff penalties — together with shutting down tasks and demolition of tasks which have failed to accumulate environmental clearance or are in non-compliance of the clearance they’ve obtained.
The SOP — issued by the ministry on July 7 within the type of an Office Memorandum – is a results of orders from the National Green Tribunal, which earlier this 12 months directed the ministry to place in place penalties and an SOP for inexperienced violations.
The memorandum provides powers to authorities companies such because the CPCB, state air pollution management boards and state surroundings impression evaluation authorities to establish such violations and take penal motion towards them.
In 2017, the ministry had initiated a six-month amnesty scheme on penalising inexperienced violations, which was later prolonged.
The SOPs refer to 2 classes of inexperienced violations — ‘Violations’ involving instances the place development work, together with growth of an current mission, has begun with out the mission proponent having acquired environmental clearance; and ‘Non-Compliance’ by which prior environmental clearance has been accorded to the mission, however it’s in violation of norms prescribed within the approval.
According to the SOPs laid down by the ministry, tasks that aren’t permissible for environmental clearance are to be demolished. Projects that are permissible in response to environmental regulation however which haven’t acquired the requisite clearance are to be shut down.
In instances of growth of a mission, together with improve in quantity of manufacturing, if environmental clearance has not been obtained, then the federal government company can now drive the mission proponent to revert to the extent of development/manufacturing earlier than the growth.
“The permissibility of the project shall be examined from the perspective of whether such activity/project was at all eligible for grant of prior EC,” says the ministry directive.
“For instance, if a Red Industry is functioning in a CRZ-I area, which means that the activity was, in the first place, not permitted at the time of commencement of the project. Therefore, the activity is not permissible and therefore it shall be closed and demolished,” it provides.
In Violation instances, the place operations haven’t commenced, 1 per cent of the overall mission value incurred as much as the date of submitting of the appliance (for example a superb of Rs 1 lakh for a mission price Rs 1 crore) might be levied.
In instances the place operations have commenced with out the required environmental clearance, 1 per cent of the overall mission value and as well as 0.25 per cent of the overall turnover through the interval of violation might be levied.
Environmentalists, nonetheless, have raised issues, saying the memorandum normalises “post facto regularisation of violations” – by which violations are first dedicated after which the mission proponent information for clearance by which they “are let off by paying a penalty”.
Kanchi Kohli of the Centre for Policy Research says, “Firstly we discover that that is an acknowledgement by the ministry that regardless of EIA guidelines being in place for seven years, most tasks appear to proceed to fall outdoors the prescribed environmental norms and are subsequently violators. Our concern can be that that is the institutionalising of violations on the premise of the polluter pays norm. Unlike in 2017, this isn’t an amnesty scheme however truly makes the method of first violating after which paying a penalty and getting away with the violation a routine affair, which is in direct contradiction to the premise of the EIA. We really feel that such a directive will enable violations to proceed regularly.’’
Kohli provides that the SOP provides “immense power” to the ministry in figuring out the violator and the offence. “We fear that this gives scope for violators, especially the big players, to negotiate with the ministry. These are very substantive changes and needed to have been included in the new EIA draft as an amendment with public discourse, which the ministry has circumvented by issuing it as an Office Memorandum. This was a big issue with the EIA draft 2020, which people had been protesting,” she provides.
