The Supreme Court had ordered setting up of an independent and powerful environment regulator to weed out corruption in grant of environmental clearances to projects but the Centre on Tuesday told it that it could only set up a body sans power to penalize violators and polluters.

While asking that a regulator be set up at both central and state levels by March 31, the apex court green bench headed by Justice A K Patnaik had on January 6 ordered that the regulator should evaluate projects, enforce environmental conditions for approvals and impose penalties on polluters.