Kasturirangan Committee

Following the push from the PMO, the infrastructure ministries and industry, the environment ministry has set up a committee to review the kind of projects requiring environmental clearance from the Centre. A re-assessment is likely to reduce the number of projects that would have to seek approval from Delhi. The committee, set up under Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan, will review what kind of projects can be dealt with at the state level and which would require central nod. At the moment, projects below a certain size or of certain nature require clearance only from the state level environmental authority while the rest are sent to the expert panels set up under the environment ministry in Delhi. The PMO has been pushing, along with several states, for changing the criteria in some cases to make the clearance process simpler for the industry and infrastructure projects.