West Bengal issues directives to streamline wildlife and forest clearances, experts raise concerns

West Bengals forest department has issued a series of directives to avoid delays in granting forest and wildlife clearances to critical infrastructure and development projectsAccording to an office memorandum issued on June 9 the directives will tackle a key bottleneck the repetitive fragmented issuance of essentialdetailssought EDS queries by clearanceprocessing officers to project proponentsExperts however said the directives take away powers from such officers including divisional forest officers DFOs nodal officers and wildlife wardens and force them to clear projects without a thorough examinationFor instance the order said a DFO or a wildlife warden cannot directly issue an EDS to a project proponent without higher administrative endorsementAn EDS is an official query requesting missing documents clarifications or data before a project proposal can be processed for clearanceThe order has also directed the formation of a statelevel review board which will be chaired by the additional chief secretary of forests and will take stock of EDS clearances every monthIn case an EDS has been raised more than once regarding a project the project application will automatically be placed on the boards agenda the order saidIt added that if there are repeated queries the nodal officer the chief wildlife warden CWLW and the DFOs concerned will have to appear before the board and justify the technical and legal necessities for doing soSpeaking to PTI Debadityo Sinha lead of the climate and ecosystems team at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy said it could be intimidating for officers to appear before the boardA good officer is the one who asks many questions from the project proponent concerned This may lead to a delay in granting clearances but it does not mean that one demoralises the officer for his criticism There is no need for the officer to appear before the board as there is an option on the PARIVESH portal to comment on the EDS query Sinha addedThe order has also formed a state technical screening cell STSC under the supervision of the nodal officer and a designated representative of the CWLW at the state headquartersThe STSC has to conduct a rapid 48hour compliance check of the baseline data before any clearance application is formally pushed into the digital queue of the field officersBaseline data involves information about water soil and air among other factors at the project site This data establishes preproject conditions to predict impacts and design mitigation strategiesPrakriti Srivastava a former Indian Forest Service IFS officer told PTI that the 48hour compliance check mentioned in the order is ambiguousIt does not clarify whether the time given is for checking the final compliance documents or carrying out the collection of baseline data according to SrivastavaIf the order is interpreted to mean that baseline data collection must happen immediately instead of over multiple seasons it can be problematic Furthermore keeping such ambiguity open to interpretation will mostly be used to facilitate diversion she addedAnother concern is that the order said the territorial DFO and the protected area network or wildlife manager concerned have to mandate and schedule a single joint site inspection within 10 working days since the formal registration of the application on PARIVESHIt added that all boundary verifications biologicalimpact assessments etc must be consolidated during this single site visitThe inspection will involve revenue authorities the wildlife wing and the project proponent according to the orderSinha said conducting a single site visit within 10 working days of submitting the application would create immense pressure on the officersIn most forest departments there is already a shortage of forest officersThey are already overburdened and asking them to evaluate the project site in such a short span of time will not allow them to work properly he addedSrivastava said the directives seem to give priority to granting clearances rather than conserving forestsThey have removed the few checks and balances that were meant to stop a project from harming the forests The whole administration now seems to be working towards granting clearances she addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever