According to union road ministry, till October 2012
a total of 307 road projects are pending for environmental and forest clearances.
This also includes cases with the Border Roads Organization (BRO), sources from the Union Road Transport Ministry (RTM) said.
It is learnt that these projects are mainly for widening existing carriageways in order to augment capacity. It takes at least 300 days and a maximum of three years for environment and forest clearances, sources said.
After the Supreme CourtÂ’s (SC) 2011 judgement on Lafarge, the environment ministry has issued new directive linking environment clearance and forest clearance. This is said to be the cause for delay in clearances.
Linking the environment clearance with forest clearance and condition of obtaining no objection certificate (NOC) from Gram Sabha of the concerned village under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) cause delay in clearances, reports suggest.
Prior, to this environment clearance was de-linked from forest clearance which means work in non-forest areas could start and work in forest area was taken up only after the forest clearance.
Of the 307 road projects, 22 are highway projects that await forest or environment clearances, sources from the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said.
The issue of environmental clearances delaying road projects took centrestage when GMR recently pulled out from the Ahmedabad-Kishangarh highway project, citing delay in getting green clearance as one of the reasons.
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