Green clearance norms eased for industrial units

Vijay C Roy
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, October 17

Setting up a unit in Punjab has become easy now. Reason: The Centre, on the recommendation of the state government, has done away with Press Note 17(1984 series) meant for the mandatory environmental clearance from the competent authority for the highly polluting industrial units. 

The move will promote ease of doing business in the state and would benefit 20 sectors such as paper, paints, dyes, leather, tanning, plastics, foundry, fermentation and electro plating industry.

The Press Note 17 was issued in 1984 mandating 20 categories of industries in the large and medium-scale sectors to obtain the environmental clearance from the Competent State Authority. As a matter of fact, the Press Note 17 was issued when there was no requirement of clearance under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 1994 (presently in 2006) and even the Consent to Establish (NOC) was not pressed at that time.

Subsequently, the Ministry of Environment & Forests and Climate Change has issued EIA in 2006, wherein it has taken a comprehensive view of the matter and provided detailed studies, procedures and conditions which need to be done or compiled with to get green clearance for these projects. The notification covers 29 categories of polluting industries as against 20 earlier in Press Note 17, so with the passage of time, the Note had lost its relevance.

“To promote ease of doing business in Punjab, we have approached the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion to do away with Press Note-17 as the EIA was much comprehensive than it. Since both of them operational, the new investor has to obtain clearances under the two Acts resulting in procedural delays. Acceding to our request, the Centre has now withdrawn the Press Note 17,” Rajat Aggarwal, CEO, Invest Punjab, said.

Besides, the industries covered under Press Note 17 had to apply to the state-level authority for obtaining site clearance before starting any construction. The authority used to send the application to eight departments like industry, forest, pollution board, fire, housing & urban development, factories, agriculture and legal metrology. After receiving comments from all departments, the application was considered, Rajat said.

“The process was cumbersome and used to take around 4-6 months. Thus, industries/projects were subjected to procedural delay, hindering growth.”