The NDA Government’s bid to fast track infrastructure projects notwithstanding, close to 10 per cent of all projects running behind schedule are still awaiting environmental clearances.
According to the statistics with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), which monitors ongoing Central sector infrastructure projects costing Rs150 crore and above on basis of time and cost over-runs, of the 217 projects that are running behind schedule, 21 projects are awaiting environmental clearances. In all, there are 727 projects that are being monitored by the Ministry.
“About 217 (of these projects) were delayed by more than 12 months with respect to their original dates of commissioning. Project implementing agencies have reported that 21 of these 217 projects are delayed due to pending clearances from the Ministry of Environment and Forests,” said Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State (Independent), MoSPI, in a written reply to the lok Sabha.
Singh said out of these 21 projects wanting environmental clearances, six projects have reported cost over-runs also.The projects are in the sectors of coal, power, petroleum and railways mainly in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Mizoram, Odisha, Sikkim, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.The minister said that the NDA government has taken major proactive measures to ensure timely completion of these projects.
To speed up work and introduce transparency, ministry of environment recently made both environment as well as forest clearances online and time bound. The Centre has also set up committees to fix responsibility of time and cost over-run as well as regular review of projects.The Environment ministry has said that the road projects along the Chinese border will now need a go-ahead from the respective states instead of waiting for a green signal from the Centre. Defence projects will also get priority for forest and environment clearances.
The new Government has also set up Central Sector Projects Coordination Committees in the states under the chief secretaries for removal of bottlenecks and facilitating speedy implementation of major projects.