Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is awaiting environment clearance for four projects

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is awaiting formal environment clearance for four highway projects only.

"There are only four projects for which formal environment clearance are awaited. These have already been recommended by Expert Appraisal Committee ( EAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests," Minister of State in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Sarvey Sathyanarayana has said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

There are total 16 (sixteen) projects for which forest clearances are at various levels of processing.

There are some projects where developers have served termination notice to NHAI ( National Highways Authority of India), he said.

The minister said that the Ministry of Environment and Forests has resolved most of the bottlenecks, like requirement of special exemption or No Objection Certificate under the Forest Rights Act in respect of strengthening and widening of the National Highway projects.

It has also de-linked the grant of Environment Clearance from the Forest Clearance for linear projects and treated the strengthening and widening of National Highways Infrastructure projects differently from the new projects.

MOEF has also allowed the construction of the National Highways in the non-forest areas in widening projects as expenditure does not become infructuous in such projects.

Accordingly, the process for obtaining environment and forest clearances are relaxed significantly for all the existing and future road projects, he added.