HUDA fails to obtain environmental clearance for its projects since 2008

[dheerajjain]

HUDA is the biggest defaulter whereas private colonizers fare much better

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130605/haryana.htm#5

HUDA fails to obtain environment clearance for its projects: RTI activist
Sumedha Sharma
Tribune News Service

Gurgaon, June 4
The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) has failed to get environment clearance for thousands of its projects across the state. In reply to an RTI application filed by local environmentalist Raman Sharma, the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) said, “HUDA has not been granted any environment clearance since the tenure of the current SEIAA, starting from 2008.”

The authority clearly stated that it was mandatory to get prior clearance under Section 8 of its 2006 notification. The lapse makes thousands of sectors, buildings commercial projects of HUDA across the state defaulter.

“The millennium city faces the threat of growing dry in next four years.

Green cover is lost here and experts are warning of disastrous effects, but the government is sleeping. We go out of the way to publicise inauguration of new projects but don’t even care for getting basic environment clearance," said Sharma.

DPS Nangal, Chief Administrator, HUDA, said, “I am not well and in a hospital. I can’t talk right now.”

TC Gupta, Principal Secretary, Town and Country Planning, said HUDA had taken the clearance from the Centre and not from the state.

“First of all, HUDA doesn’t build buildings. So, in majority of the cases, no clearance is required. Secondly, the projects near the state border with the national capital have to get their clearances from the Centre and we have done so wherever required. I can myself remember getting the clearance for the Bandhwari treatment plant and Ghata highway. We have also written to the Centre to allow us to get clearances from the state authority as it is easy,” said Gupta.

His claims, however, fail to find support. HUDA does not figure anywhere in the enlisted Haryana projects which have got clearance till date from the Ministry of Environment.

Gurgaon is one of those districts of the state which face environmental threat owing to rampant urbanisation and colonisation.

Environmentalists across the state have been demanding action against colonisers for violating environment norms, but the fact is that HUDA itself is a defaulter in fulfilling the norms.