Guest Blog by Amruta Pradhan

The Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has issued Draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2020 in March 2020. The opening paragraph of the draft notification 2020 states that the purpose of the notification is “imposing certain restrictions and prohibition” on the development projects. The purpose of amending the notification is said to “make the process more transparent and expedient”. However, as one reads through the 83 paged verbose notification and puts several pieces of the proposed amendments together, it becomes more and more clear that the purpose is in fact dilution of the EIA process, protecting the project proponents from any kind of public scrutiny, covering up for the violations and making the Environmental Clearance (EC) process more and more non-transparent, undemocratic, unjust and unaccountable. Continue reading “Draft EIA Notification 2020: Dilutes EIA process & encourages violations” →