The Union government has reconstituted Karnataka's State-level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) for a period of three years. The announcement was made through an extraordinary gazette notification dated May 2, 2014. Technically, there had been no SEIAA in operation in the state for seven months — from October 1, 2013 to May 1, 2014, since the three-year term of the previous panel had expired on September 30, 2013.
Projects or activities falling under Category ‘B’ in the Schedule of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006 require environmental clearance from the SEIAA, which is advised to act by the State-level Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC). Both the SEIAA and SEAC for Karnataka were last constituted for a period of three years by publication in an official gazette on October 1, 2010.
Both SEIAA and SEAC are the legal bodies created under EIA Notification 2006 and State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC) was an additional body in the state as has been highlighted by a dna report, ‘‘The SECC, that was drafted way back in 1985 by noted ecologist Madhav Gadgil, acted as a filter for industries/projects that did not fall under the ambit of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification of 2006.’’
The Karnataka government, meanwhile, has discontinued the SECC. This was done by a government order FEE 19 ENV 2013 dated February 7, 2014. The preamble to the order had remarked, "The government have examined the role of the State Environment Clearance Committee in light of the EIA Notification, 2006 and found no relevance. It is therefore decided to discontinue the State Environment Clearance Committee (SECC) with immediate effect." Experts say that the notification constituting SECC was impliedly repealed after September 14, 2006 when the EIA Notification, 2006 came into force.
The SECC issue has been mired in controversy ever since it came to light that the committee had been discontinued even as a study on the entire SECC process was being conducted by the autonomous Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute (EMPRI). The report of the appraisal of environmental clearances accorded in the previous ten years had pointed out innumerable loopholes in the process and laxity on behalf of the SECC. The report had also suggested stricter regulation and monitoring of environmental clearances in the state.
HS Ramesh, head of the department of environmental engineering at SJ College of Engineering in Mysore will be the SEIAA chairman. HR Rajmohan, officer-in-charge at the Regional Occupational Health Centre at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will be member (project management and risk assessment), while the secretary to the department of forest, ecology and environment will be the member secretary, the notification issued by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) said. The committee members, incidentally, remain the same.
The Centre has also reconstituted the SEAC, which will be headed by N Naganna and comprise another 12 members. The SEIAA will take decisions on basis of recommendations made by the SEAC, which will remain in force for three years from the date of the gazette notification.
