Plans afoot to skip green approvals for road widening

To speed up the construction of roads and highways and avoid delays, the Union transport ministry has planned to seek exemption from environment clearance for all brownfield (existing) roads and lane expansion projects irrespective of their length. The action plan has been finalized as part of the roadmap for the effective implementation of budget initiatives. Currently, no environment clearance is required to expand any existing linear project of up to 100-km and also road projects which are built as a bypass for urban areas. The action plan for "streamlining process of environment clearance" has been prepared as part of the overall plan to fast-track the budget announcements. The transport ministry has set a September 3 deadline for seeking this exemption from the environment and forests ministry. To expedite public hearing, the ministry has proposed that this should be scheduled within 10 days of submission of documents from the user agency to state pollution control boards and in case of rescheduling due to lack of public participation, the environment ministry may mandate a pathway to automatically set the date of hearing within 10 days of the original hearing and provide 'deemed as approved' after the second hearing.