As many as 125 projects taken up in Jammu and Kashmir under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, the Centrally-funded scheme for expansion of rural road network, are awaiting clearances by the forest

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.

Yet to achieve financial closure for project because of pending draft agreement

The West Bengal government has upped the ante against JSW Steel and charged it with delaying the Salboni steel and power project. At Rs 35,000 crore, the investment for the project is the largest in the state. Questioning JSW's intentions, Partha Chatterjee, West Bengal industry minister, today said if the company continued to dilly-dally, it could be asked to return the land. "I am fed up with the company. It seems they have no intention of taking the project forward. We have waited enough. They have been talking about the iron ore problem. But that is not the state government's responsibility. They are raising one issue after another," Chatterjee said.

In a move that could give a fillip to India's unconventional gas production, the ministry of environment and forests has given the phase-III clearance for Essar Oil's Raniganj block in West Bengal. The company will now be able to drill up to 650 wells, compared with the current 135.

The clearances would help Essar Oil invest another Rs 2,500 crore to increase the number of drilled wells to 300 by the end of this year and also rise production to three million standard cubic metres of gas per day (scmd), up from around 60,000 scmd.