New Delhi Even as the Prime Minister pitches for infrastructure investments, the Union environment ministry is planning to reduce the area available for mining and other infrastructure projects. Official sources told FE the ministry would soon earmark “inviolate areas” which would apply to all development and infrastructural projects, besides subsuming nine coal fields in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which were earlier termed “no go”areas. So the new norms will be much more prohibitive than the earlier regime.

“The go, no go classification will be subsumed in the definition of the inviolate areas. In addition, there will be 7-8 criteria defining inviolate areas, including protected area status, crop diversity, biodiversity richness and the number of species found.