With the Supreme Court's decision on March 12, about 2,500 km highway projects valued at about Rs 25,000 crore which were stuck pending environment clearances, can now move forward. the apex court permitted de-linking of environment clearance from forest clearance.

In a move that may benefit 25 road projects, the Supreme Court clarified that road developers can begin work on a project once it gets environment clearance, irrespective of whether forest clearance is granted or not. The court clarified this while hearing a case involving Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and road regulator National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). In the

Minister of State of Coal Pratik Prakash Bapu Patil informed Rajya Sabha that the rise in petrol and diesel prices will impact the cost of coal production in the country. The rise in diesel price would increase the cost of production of Coal India (CIL), which accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal mining, by Rs 600 crore per annu

Taking note of difficulties faced by road projects, the Economic Survey has favoured easing of exit routes for highway developers. Exit routes need to be eased so that promoters can sell equity positions after construction, passing on all benefits and responsibilities to entities that step in, says the Survey.

In order to address delay in projects, Union Environment and Forests Minister Jayanthi Natarajan allowed linear infrastructure projects, such as roads, transmission lines and gas pipelines to skip approval from gram sabhas. Under the Forest Rights Act, these projects required the approval of gram sabhas. The decision was taken con

To clear hurdles for road projects in forest areas without mandatory consent of gram sabha (the village body) the Union Tribal Affairs and Environment Ministry on February 1 resolved their differences.

Tata Steel and Adhunik Power & Natural Resource will have to secure forest approval for operating the Ganeshpur coalmine in Latehar, Jhar­khand, which was allocated to them for their thermal projects.The coal mine has a production capacity of four million tonne per annum (normative).

The Union Finance Ministry has sanctioned viability gap funding of Rs 1,920 crore for the Mumbai trans-harbour link, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has said. The project, estimated to cost Rs 9,630 crore, will be implemented on public-private partnership mode. The construction period will be for five years.

The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) under the union environment ministry gave conditional clearance to the plan of Cairn India to raise crude oil output capacity from its Mangala Processing Terminal in Rajasthan. The approval would enable Cairn India to raise oil production from 175,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 200,000 bpd and associated gas from 35 to 40 million stan