Skip to main content

Delay expected in eco-clearance of 3,500 Gujarat cases as Modi's Man Friday joins Prime Minister's Office

PK Misra
With Dr PK Misra, who was principal secretary to chief minister Narendra Modi during the 2002 riots, having left to Delhi as Prime Minister Modi’s additional principal secretary, Gujarat’s “industry-friendly” babus and small entrepreneurs are keeping their fingers crossed: What will happen to a whopping nearly 3,500 applications, said to be pending before the State-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), which he had just come to chair after the post remained vacant for nearly a year?
The Gujarat government failed to send names of chairman and other members of SEIAA to the Government of India for forming the new authority after July 2013, which, environmentalists say, was a major reasons for the failure to “clear” so many applications. Well-placed sources in the Gujarat government told Counterview that Misra, who is known to be perhaps the closest IAS bureaucrat to Modi, had worked a “complete time table” to clear huge backlog of applications pending before the powerful authority for environmental clearance.
The number of not cleared cases was just 1,700 in December 2013, and these have now more than doubled, as even mining cases were also brought before the authority for clearance because of a Supreme Court order. Most of those who applied are small entrepreneurs who may have taken huge debts for setting up units were feeling “cheated in a state known for its industry-friendly approach”. With Misra in, a ray of hope had come about that he would “clear” all the cases within six months, “but things seem again gloomy”, an official conceded.
An IAS bureaucrat, Misra was Modi’s principal secretary between 2001 and 2004, when he went to Delhi on deputation. He was Union agriculture secretary for two years, and was made secretary, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) till his retirement in 2008. On his return to Gujarat, Misra was promptly appointed as chairman of the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC), responsible for fixing electricity tariffs for various categories of consumers as a “reward” for his support to Modi all through.
Expectation was particularly high from Misra because, as chairman of GERC, he assiduously favoured power tariff hike for the consumers, even as favouring the case of industrialists. In fact, he went so far as to reject the Gujarat government plea to the GERC for bringing down the rate at which solar power was being bought from solar power producers -- Rs 15 per unit. The state government argument was that the rate fixed a few years ago under an agreement was too high, and solar equipment and installation costs had actually fallen drastically to Rs 7 per unit.
In fact, officials say, it is difficult to understand why Misra accepted becoming chairman of the authority even when he was “sounded” by Modi personally that he would be taken to Delhi. “The plan worked out by Misra required clearance of 20-30 cases on a daily basis, with the authority sitting for the whole day”, the official said, adding, “As for mining cases, which have piled up lately, the industries and mines department was asked to assist the process of environmental clearance to quicken the process.”
Gujarat environmentalists dubbed failure to clear so many cases by the Gujarat government as “Modi tax” – a direct allusion to the “Jayanthi tax” remark by Modi ahead of the Lok Sabha elections against the backdrop of large number of cases pending for environmental clearance under the then Union environment and forests minister Jayanthi Natarajan. Mahesh Pandya of Paryavaran Mitra particularly said, on the basis of facts obtained under the Right to Information Act, that Gujarat’s pending cases were a direct result of failure to appoint the new SEIAA.

Comments

TRENDING

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

What's wrong with those seeking to promote Sanskrit? An ex-Hindi professor has the answer

Ajay Tiwari  I have always wondered why certain elite sections are so fascinated by Sanskrit, to the extent of even practicing speaking a language that, for all practical purposes, isn’t alive. During my Times of India stint in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat state capital, I personally witnessed an IAS bureaucrat, Bhagyesh Jha, trying to converse with a friend in Sanskrit.