The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has served notices to 14 authorities directing them to remove all boards, nails and advertisements from trees falling under their jurisdictions and has directed th

Suggestion came when neither the NHAI nor the Pune civic body was willing to undertake the task of replanting trees

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday suggested the Pune Municipal Corporation to take the help of school and college students for replanting of those trees which shall be cut for the road widening project on the 800-km Mumbai Bangalore highway. A division bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Amjad Sayed was hearing an application filed by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) seeking permission to cut 1,307 trees falling in the jurisdiction of the Pune civic body for widening the highway from four lanes to six lanes.

The Coal Ministry has written to the Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) for streamlining granting of clearances by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) for various coal mining projects in the country.

The Coal Ministry has asked the CCI to consider parallel processing of environmental clearance (EC) and forest clearance (FC) for coal projects as in the case of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) projects. “Further, the issue of enhanced borehole density for exploration in forest areas without the need for seeking prior EC needs to be resolved urgently,” the Coal Ministry note states.

New Delhi: Projects worth over Rs 7 lakh crore — which is equivalent to almost half the government spending in the current financial year — are held up in the absence of environmental and forest cl

Putting an end to the face-off between the National Highways Authority of India and Ministry of Environment & Forests, the latter has delinked environmental and forest clearances in case of all

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.

In a bid to drive out the highways sector from a severe financial crunch, the Economic Survey proposed to ease exit norms for developers to free up equity for new projects.

“In current market conditions, these firms are unable to raise new equity. Exit route needs to be eased so that promoters can sell equity positions after construction, passing on all benefits and responsibilities to entities that step in,” the survey, presented in Parliament on Wednesday said.

After a concerted push from the road transport ministry, the finance ministry has agreed to consider offering concessions to stuck highway projects under the public private partnership (PPP) mode.

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 states through which the highway passes, also giving forest clearance, the MoEF has given the green signal for the project.

The Rajasthan portion of the six-laning project was cleared earlier and in a meeting today, the Gujarat portion was also approved, paving the way for the project to be cleared from the angles of both environment and forest regulations, a ministry official said.