With an aim to speed up defence infrastructure development along China border, the Environment Ministry will soon ease norms for clearances under a new policy that will give decision-making right to the States concerned. At present, China has vastly superior infrastructure as compared to India all along the line of Actual Control (lAC) to sustain its troops
Once the policy is formulated, the Defence Ministry will not need to seek environmental clearances for constructing border roads and other strategically important projects coming within 100 kms of the lAC, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said here on Thursday. According to official figures, 76 defence projects are pending in the Ministry for forest clearance.
The country shares a 4,056-km border with China stretching across five States, including Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Jammu & Kashmir.
While China has built roads right up to the lAC to ensure uninterrupted logistical support to its troops, India lags far behind. In fact, in many sectors in Arunachal Pradesh, troops have to march for four to five days from the nearest road to reach their posts along the lAC.
lack of roads in all these strategically important States hampers preparedness in terms of supplying weapons, ammunition, food and other essential items to troops guarding the lAC. Most of these posts are maintained by air, and helicopters are the only source of sustaining the troops.
For years, the Army has pleaded for hastening construction of roads in all the States facing China. Seventy three roads in these five States were termed as “strategic”, and many of them were held up due to lack of environmental clearance.
Moreover, the Army needs 5,000 acre of land for building infrastructure for Mountain Strike Corps in the eastern sector to meet any challenge from China. The UPA Government gave the go-ahead for the Strike Corps in July last year costing more than Rs80,000 crore. The Army has started raising the Corps and will recruit more than 40,000 personnel, besides inducting long-range artillery guns, howitzers, helicopters and other equipment for fighting a war in the mountains. However, the project for acquisition of land is held up due to environmental clearance.
These projects are now expected to be cleared expeditiously under the new policy that the Ministry will roll out in the next one month.
Javadekar met Defence Ministry officials on Thursday at their request for fast-tracking projects that were held up due to delayed approvals.
“Delays in these strategic projects were due to case-by-case decision-making process. We will now make policy-laid decisions,” he said after the meet. The Minister said he will further discuss the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley.
He stressed that after the policy comes into place, the Defence Ministry will no longer have to route its applications on border projects through the Environment Ministry. “The 100-km area within the lAC is for defence purpose, but you need forest clearance... It will be brought under general approval mode under State Government so that defence projects can be expedited and forests can also be conserved,” said Javadekar.
Granting green clearances have been in accordance with the Forest Conservation Rules 2003 that prescribe definite timelines for clearance of proposals at the State and Central governments levels. Accordingly, for border roads along the Indo-China border and projects of national security importance, 90 days are required to get it processed at the level of the State Government and 60 days at the Central level. But the timelines were seldom followed in the past, sources said.
The Ministry recently granted clearance to a radar station at Narcondam in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, pending for six years. The minister assured that environment protection will be kept in mind while framing the policies. “In Narcondam and other areas, we will ensure complete protection of nature, including of hornbills. The minister also tweeted, “We won’t compromise on environment protection.”