How Haryana allowed 15 companies to break the law and get away with it

State’s move to grant six-month amnesty to firms operating without environment clearance fails to survive challenge in NGT, which deems it illegal.

Throwing environment protection norms to the wind seems to have become quite the fad. The latest to jump on to the bandwagon is the Haryana government, which in an order issued late last year, created a special six-month amnesty to grant post facto environment clearances to a group of 15 companies that manufacture carcinogenic formaldehyde, in complete violation of India’s main law for environment clearance, the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006.

A review of official documents shows that the 11 November 2020 order, though temporary in nature and slightly different from the legal provisions in the central government’s draft EIA …

Author

Akshay Deshmane

Akshay is an investigative reporter and former writer at The Morning Context. Based in Delhi, he writes about the environment, public policy and economy from the lens of the pulls and pressures of an ambitious democracy. Akshay uses the right to information extensively for reporting stories of vital public interest. Over the past decade and more, he has worked for HuffPost India, Frontline, The Economic Times, Down To Earth and DNA.

akshay@mailtmc.com