The Prime Minister's Office has asked the environment ministry to relax the clauses in the relevant laws to speed up clearances for road projects.

THE empowered group of ministers (EGoM) for hydel power projects in Arunachal Pradesh will find it tough to get the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) on board for the proposed all-at-a-time clearance mechanism for supporting infrastructure projects.

According to sources, at the upcoming EGoM meeting the power ministry will pitch for a simultaneous process for environmental and forest clearances as well as the approvals for land acquisition and preparation of detailed project reports (DPRs) for supporting infrastructure projects like roads and bridges.

Work could soon begin in a clutch of stranded highway projects with likely combined investments of over R20,000 crore, as the Union environment ministry is set to give them approvals in one go.

The 555-km Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad project from which the developer GMR Infrastructure pulled out in early January citing huge delays in clearances, has now got all requisite approvals from the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF). According to sources, with Gujarat, one of the two state