The Government has revised its 2019 guidelines allowing supplementary linear projects linked to mining, but conceived later, to be considered as standalone projects and cleared by respective regional offices of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The move is likely to hasten the construction of conveyor pipelines for mineral evacuation.
In a letter dated 23 August 2021 to all states and union territories, the Ministry’s Forest Conservation Division has allowed Integrated Regional Offices and Regional Empowered Committees that clear standalone linear projects to clear supplementary ones linked to already approved mining projects.
An earlier 5 August 2019 ministry guideline required such after thoughts seeking diversion of forest area to be considered by the same office that had cleared the initial project –in the case of major minerals and coal this was the Ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC). The guideline had been issued based on this recommendation of the FAC dwelling on proposals for mineral conveyor belt.
Moved by a request from Coal India in April for “expeditious” approvals at regional level of such supplementary projects for mineral despatch, the Ministry has now changed its mind. Coal India had explained its request arguing that transportation of coal produced more air pollution than its production; to address this it has planned for mechanized evacuation of coal through conveyor belts along with silo and dispatch via railway sidings.
The FAC believes it is safe to delegate such projects to regional offices since information of its approval for the original mining project is available online. To “ensure sanctity” it needs the project proponent to certify that all mineral extraction pathways have been critically examined and that no new proposal would be made in the next five years. It also seeks “cogent and convincing justifications” for why such linear infrastructure were not included at the inception state.
The revised guidelines warns state government and user agencies against encouraging detachments of linear projects from main mining proposals. “To the extent possible, linear infrastructure such as roads, railways or conveyor belts, etc ancillary to mining should be included in the main proposal and under inevitable circumstance only, such proposals submitted by the user agency should be considered as standalone projects,” says the notification.
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