The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said an independent regulator — the National Environment Appraisal and Monitoring Authority — would soon revamp the process of granting environmental clearance and help protect the ecology without bringing back “the hated licence permit raj”.
Speaking at an international seminar on ‘Global Environment and Disaster Management: Law and Society', Dr Singh added that “this authority could lead to a complete change in the process of granting environmental clearances. Staffed by dedicated professionals, it will work on a full-time basis to evolve better and more objective standards of scrutiny.”.
The Prime Minister also said that development of new technologies will play an important role in addressing the rising environmental concerns.
“The task ahead is to design a system of intellectual property rights which provides adequate incentives to invest in development of new environment-friendly technologies and, at the same time, ensuring that these technologies become available to poor countries at affordable costs,” Dr Singh said.
The Chief Justice of India, Mr S. H. Kapadia, called for a regulatory mechanism for appraisal and pricing of minerals.
He suggested that there should not just be a monitoring mechanism in charge of appraisal of mining projects, but also one for pricing.
Pricing of minerals
The biggest problem faced by the mining sector is that of pricing of minerals that are exported. Time has come for the excavated minerals to have a price-discovery mechanism, Mr Kapadia said.
The ad valorem royalty is not considered, which results in public sector companies earning less profit margins and private companies, huge margins.
This is because of the difference between the royalties they pay to the Government and the amount they realise abroad. Due to this, illegal mining is going on in many States, he said.