Hyderabad: The Central Pollution Control Board and the State Pollution Control Board could be things of the past if the recommendations of the TSR Committee, set up by the Union Environment Ministry, are adopted.
With the government failing to protect the environment, the judiciary has stepped in. The T.S.R. Subraman-ian Committee was set up by the NDA government to study environmental laws and design a system to protect environment and to also help the development. In its draft, the committee proposed that State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) be merged into state-level equivalents of the NEMA and that they, most importantly, be made accountable to the Union government.
A senior scientist with Telangana State pollution Control Board (TSPCB) said, “This decision was important because a study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences showed that SPCB chairpersons were political appointees and SPCBs have earned a reputation for being corrupt and disinterested in enforcing compliance to environmental clearance conditions.”
The committee, which was set up on August 29 last year to review the functioning of six environmental laws, also recommended regular, independent assessments of the work done by the Forest Department.
Sagar Dhara, environmental engineer and consultant for United Nations Environment Programme said, “The Forest Conservation Act might have minimised the diversion of forest land, but the ministry's own statistics show a decline in the quality of forest cover. The area under protected areas might have grown but the number of wildlife has fallen. There are innumerable notifications seeking to reduce air, water and land pollution but health hazards are rampant. Our rivers are only getting dirtier.”
Hence, the committee suggested for new environmental governance architecture, which also brings all environmental laws, dealt by different bodies, under the Environmental Law Management Act. As per the judgements of Supreme Court, NEMA and SEMA will be in charge of project clearances and monitoring compliance with environmental clearance conditions. “This separation of functions between policy making and implementation is important,” said a senior official.
The main thrust of MoEF is entirely on clearances. A larger departure comes in the design of the SEMAs. It will essentially combine the State Environmental Assess-ment Committee (which vets projects cleared at the state-level) and the SPCB. Until now, these bodies have been more answerable to the state governments.
The report suggests that NEMA's orders be binding on the SEMAs for everything except project clearances. And also that just five of the SEMAs’ proposed 15 members be appointed by the state government.
An official with APPCB said, “Since these new proposals, the committee has suggested appointment of qualified and technical individuals, the staff administration might change completely. We are even ready to take voluntary retirement.”
