NEW DELHI: The Environment ministry will soon come up with a set of standard guidelines for giving environmental clearances to real estate sector as a part of its efforts for ease of doing business and making processes simple, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said today.
"We will publish draft notification which will be indicative as we want public consultation to happen. It will be robust but simple and standardized guidelines for real estate projects," the Union Environment Minister said during an interactive session with industries organized by industry lobby FICCI.
Currently, apart from environment clearance, permission is also required from municipal authority for building residential projects, the minister said.
"We studied all the conditions for environmental clearances given in the last 10 years. They are practically the same. So we have standardised the conditions," Javadekar said.
Javadekar said the state governments, which will include those guidelines in their building by-laws, will no longer need to give environment approvals separately.
"Real estate sector will not require a separate window for environment clearance in those states which will adopt our standard rules into their building laws and permission rules. This way the plan sanctioning authority will also become environment sanctioning authority if they accept our standard guidelines," he said.
The ministry is also deliberating on introduction of civil penalties for violating environmental clearance rules.
"We are also bringing civil penalties. If somebody violates the conditions given in environment clearance or does not take clearance and starts operation, it is all categorized as violation," he said.
Javadekar said not even a single case has been decided ever for violating the rules and regulations related to the environment clearances by the industries.
"Everybody was happy with the violation and the process. But now we are changing the process. We are bringing a law which will bring in civil penalties. And they will be hidden.
Because deterrent has to be created," he said.
Javadekar said even as processes and permissions have been made easy, the compliance of environment rules will become stricter.
"In Ganges, out of 764 polluting industries, 570 installed the monitoring machines but 140 were non-compliant. We gave them closure orders," he said.
The minister also said that the pollution in Ganga has reduced by 30 per cent in the past two years.
"With limited monitoring of one year we have successfully reduced industrial pollution in Ganga by 30 per cent in comparison to what it used to be two years ago," Javadekar said.