Affidavit filed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change dated 30/01/2020 regarding implementation of Monitoring Action Plan (MAP) for augmenting compliance monitoring in the country.

Simultaneous action has also been initiated to strengthen the legal provision on monitoring as part of EIA Notification 2006 - which at present was limited to para 10 on 'Post Environmental Clearance Monitoring'. The provision at present only refers to procedure related to self-compliance by the project proponent. Monitoring mechanism has now been integrated in draft EIA Notification, 2020, which include procedure for monitoring, procedure for dealing with non-compliances and violation, associated penalities and others. 

The report states that since 2014, about 8000 category A environmental clearances and more than 30000 Category B clearances have been issued. The MAP scheme has to be designed keeping in view the quantum of work, manpower requirement and resources. It was mentioned, that the number of projects would further increase once ECs before 2014 were also considered.

NEERI presented the plan of action to implement the MAP objectives and scope, which would involve use of data analytics, comprising of data assessment, data integration, data triangulation and EC status module. The Additional Secretary, MoEF&CC noted that looking into the number of projects that required monitoring, the comprehensive approach of monitoring should include monitoring at entity level instead at the project level, ensuring uniform interpretation of EC requirements for consistency across the board, robust back end technology driven process that prompt self-correcting mechanism at the organization level. The mechanism for implementation of MAP ought to be developed keeping short term, medium term and long-term goals and milestones.

Note: The report was uploaded to the NGT site on July 7, 2020