Decision-making on environment clearances will be made transparent as well as time-bound
Broken
The average delay in grant of environmental clearance is 238 days under BJP government (it was 231 in 2013) as compared to stipulated 105 days, according to March 2017 CAG Report. This is a further delay of 7 days per project. The year wise delay in grant of Environment Clearances is given below:
2011: 86 days
2012: 184 days
2013: 231 days
2014: 316 days
2015 (Upto July): 238 days
Only 11% projects have been granted environmental clearances under bounded time. No such credible report could be found for years 2016-2018.
A National Regulator to oversee the entire process of grant of Environmental Clearance and monitoring is yet to be appointed despite directions of the Supreme Court, the report further stated.
The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on 9th August 2018 issued a notification for standardisation of environment clearances.
In August 2018, the BJP government claims to have launched the PARIVESH portal (Pro-Active and Responsive facilitation by Interactive, Virtuous and Environmental Single-window Hub) which is aimed at creating single registration and single sign-in for all types of clearances (i.e. Environment, Forest, Wildlife and CRZ), unique-ID for all types of clearances required for a particular project and a single Window interface for the proponent to submit applications for getting all types of clearances (i.e. Environment, Forests, Wildlife and CRZ clearances). However, a basic search using Google’s advanced tool reveals that the portal existed before Modi Government came to power. Therefore, it is not clear what exactly was launched in August 2018 if the portal existed before 2014.
Considering there has been a decline in number of days in the year subsequent to BJP coming to power compared to 2013, the year before Congress led government headed into election (and the data is absent since then), non-appointment of National Regulator despite Supreme Court order, and the lack of disclosures with regard to time taken for environment clearances, the promise is considered “Broken”