The Modi government is letting companies get away with illegally clearing forests

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Editor's note: Eight coal mines in Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra; two wind energy projects in Karnataka; four iron ore mines in Odisha. Although these are different kinds of projects located in different parts of India, they are bound by a few common facts.  One, they’ve all come up on forest land. Two, they involve clearing of forests without mandatory prior clearance under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. And three, the violations are being regularized by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, under a controversial legal instrument called the ex-post facto prior clearance.  Documents reviewed by The Morning Context show that the ministry is considering granting such a clearance to at least 34 projects that violated the 1980 law—India’s primary forest protection measure, whose violation invites hefty fines and even a jail term. The projects belong to public sector units like Coal India and private companies like Tata Steel, Vedanta-run ESL Steel and German wind energy firm Enercon. The projects had illegally cleared forest land to the extent of 4,177 hectares—equivalent to a tenth of Mumbai’s municipal limits.  Ex-post facto …