Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday urged state environment ministers against unnecessarily allowing obstacles in the name of the environment and to ensure ease of living and doing business while highlighting the importance of the parivesh portal for the single-window forest, wildlife, environment, and coastal regulation zone clearances.
He said over 6,000 proposals for environmental and 6,500 for forest clearance were pending with the states. He called for clearing them sooner as projects worth thousands of crores of rupees will be stuck due to the pendency.
Modi underlined the need for bringing about a change in the work environment so that the pendency goes down and clearance is expedited.
“Expedited clearances should also take care of the rules and give priority to the development of the people… It is a win-win situation for both the economy and ecology. …we have to remember the faster the environment clearance is available, the faster the development will also take place,” he said in his address at an environment ministers’ conference.
The conference has been convened to improve synergy between the Central and state governments in formulating policies on issues such as plastic pollution elimination and for action plans to combat climate change with a focus on the Lifestyle for the Environment (LIFE) Movement. Modi launched LIFE in June for people to have a lifestyle in tune with their planet.