Practice of 'tax' payment in environment ministry has ended: Prakash Javadekar

Believing in "development without destruction", the government has ended the practice of "tax" being paid for environmental clearances, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Tuesday  as he targeted the previous UPA regime.

Contending that giving clearance to projects was not a "crime", he sought to dispel the "myth" that protecting environment amounted to stopping development. The Modi government "holds the flag of environment in one hand and the agenda of development in another," Javadekar said while replying to the Demand for Grants of Environment Ministry which was passed later. Attacking the previous Congress-led UPA government, he said, "We have made the system transparent. The game of office-office is over. The tax which needed to be paid earlier has been stopped... This (government) is mission without commission."

Although he did not elaborate, he was clearly referring to the "Jayanthi tax", a term used to point to corruption in the ministry when it was headed by the then Congress leader Jayanthi Natarajan, who has subsequently quit the party. Giving details of the measures being taken by the government to tackle air and water pollution, Javadekar rejected the charge that environment was being compromised to push various projects.

"The government is committed to the agenda of 'development without destruction', he said while rebutting the opposition charge that his ministry was hastily clearing projects. He said number of projects cleared had come down from 1522 and 1317 in 2012 and 2013 respectively to 783 in 2014 and the land diverted for them in the these years was 25,000, 41,000 and 35,000 hectares respectively. At the same time, he questioned, "Is giving permission (to projects) a crime?". 

Javadekar said his Ministry cleared 17 projects put on the "priority" by previous Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for which the required committee had not met for 17 months. "We cleared them in 17 days." He also mentioned about India's strong stand in Lima climate change talks, saying it was accepted by the world. While admitting to "very poor quality" of air in cities like Delhi, he said this was a problem being faced in big cities across the world and blamed construction waste, burning of straw besides rising number of vehicles for it in the national capital.

The Environment Ministry, he said, was putting in place rules to regulate construction waste like dust as done by Delhi Metro and making efforts to end burning of straw. "We have already made rules regulating cement industry, one of the biggest polluters, more stringent." He also referred to the launch of the air quality index by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to measure air pollution in measure cities.

Giving details about measures being taken to control pollution, he said his ministry had put on its website the proposed rules to regulate solid waste, e-waste, plastic, bio and hazardous waste among others. Speaking about water pollution, he said India had the means to treat only 35-40 per cent of total sewage and what made matters worse was that many of the existing plants did not work.

Over one-third of industrial waste and over half of domestic waste was untreated and being discharged into rivers and other water bodies. "We have taken up Clean Ganga project now. Work to clean other rivers would also be taken up later." The government has procured latest equipment for 24-hour monitoring of water pollution and industries discharging effluents in rivers would be fined, he said.

He also dismissed allegations that the power of 'gram sabha' had been diluted and forest rules changed. The BJP government was giving a push to renewable energy, he said, adding that Andaman island would have bio-mass power in over 2 years. It presently depends on electricity produced by generators.