New Delhi, January 23: Jairam Ramesh is a minister who has been in the news for his tough stand on development projects. However, this right to information response filed by an NGO, shows, that popular perception maybe wrong.
Since Jairam Ramesh took over, as many as 535 odd big industrial projects have been approved by the expert committees in his ministry and a minuscule six have been rejected.
One look at the RTI response and it’s obvious that the environment ministry role as a clearing house for big industrial projects is still on track.
Ritwick Dutta said, “I don’t know what the general fears of the corporates are but I think one thing they need to be least afraid of is the way the ministry’s appraisal is concerned. You still have over 99.99 per cent chance of your project being approved.”
A comparison of Jairam Ramesh with his predecessor A Raja in fact shows that the rate of approvals has been largely the same. During Raja’s tenure as environment minister – as many as 1700 projects were cleared and 14 rejected.
So is the environment ministry really taking a tough stand? These RTI responses suggest otherwise.
——-Agencies