The Union home minister pitched for a pragmatic approach and contended that any dogmatic approach could affect the higher growth objectives of the government.
Union home minister P Chidambaram has strongly disfavoured environment minister Jairam Ramesh's approach in identifying Go/No-Go forest areas with regard to coal mining.
"Everyday the country was adding thousands of automobiles which definitely damaged the environment; for this we take mitigation measures and not stop producing cars," Chidambaram said at a recent meeting of the group of ministers constituted to address issues related to Go/No-Go areas.
Chidambaram pitched for a pragmatic approach and contended that any dogmatic approach could affect the higher growth objectives of the government.
He said the ideal approach should be based on likely damage to environment and forests which could be classified on three parameters - activities leading to irreversible damage; reversible damage and compensatory damage.
Chidambaram felt a large number of coal areas would be cleared if an approach was based on the suggestions made by him.
The home minister said problems related to coal mining needed to be addressed on priority basis as there were issues with hydel and nuclear power development that limit their capacity enhancement.
With ministers of power, coal, and steel favouring fast-tracking of green clearances, Jairam offered to re-examine the Go/No-Go approach if the ministries were uncomfortable with it.
He said the Go/No-Go approach was originally suggested by the ministry of coal.
However, he said it was not feasible to grant automatic clearance to proposals of various ministries.
The Go/No-Go policy is based on straight jacket approach that coal mining should be allowed only in non-dense forest areas, which were about 65% of the total coal bearing areas in 12 coal blocks studied for the policy.
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