PARIVESH – MOEFF & CC’s launches yet another industry friendly process at environmental cost #WTFnews

– Rohit Prajapati

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change “proudly” announced recently it’s new endeavour with yet another acronym  “PARIVESH  It is a web based, role based workflow application  developed for  submission and monitoring of the proposals submitted by the proponents for seeking Environment, Forest, Wildlife and CRZ Clearances from Central, State and district level authorities. It automates the entire tracking of proposals which includes online submission of a new proposal, editing/updating the details of proposals and displays status of the proposals at each stage of the workflow.”

This process reveals the worst kept secret of the Ministry of Environment and Forests “Dr. Vardhan [Minister] … said that with PARIVESH, MoEFCC has become more of a facilitator, than a regulator.”

MoEF&CC’s  mandated concern should be for Environment, Forest, and Climate as mentioned in the name of the Ministry, but  the recent announcement makes it clear that the ministry is working for ease of business for industries instead of protecting environment. Alike PARIVESH of MOEFF & CC could instead have  an online tracking and status of complaints for the violation of terms and conditions of environment clearances, environment laws, about air, water, and soil pollution.

Generally when people affected by pollution file complains they get poor or no reply from the MoEF&CC, State Pollution Control Boards and they are not in position to locate status of their complaints.

Even in our Public Interest litigation Writ Petition No. 375 of 2012, Supreme court Order dated 22.02.2016 clearly states that “17. It would be in the interest of implementation of  the  objective sought to be achieved,  to  also  require  each  concerned  State (and  each, concerned Union  Territory)  to  make  provision  for  “online,  real  time, continuous monitoring system” to display  emission  levels,  in  the  public domain, on the portal of the concerned State  Pollution  Control  Board.  … Such measures shall be put in place by all  the  concerned  State Governments (including, the concerned Union Territories), within six  months from today.” This deadline was over on 22.08.207 but no action has been taken by the MoEF&CC.

This has once again exposed the misplaced  concerns and intentions of the MoEF& CC that favours industries over Nature.