Industry faces PCB hurdle on path to growth

LUCKNOW: Even as chief minister Mayawati is at pains to attract industries to the state, investments worth hundreds of crores of rupees have been stalled by the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) by an inordinate delay in granting ‘No objection certificates’ to 22 industries.
According to work schedule number 61.02, sub-point number 08, of meeting number 61 of the UPPCB, held on April 21, 2001, the board passed a resolution that an NOC will be deemed granted if the board takes more than four months to issue it.
Calculating backwards from Thursday, April 3, 2003, the UPPCB can be held directly responsible for a delay in granting NOCs for a shocking 22 industrial units in the state, out of a total of 68 pending NOC cases. These applications for NOCs have been pending from as far back as November 2, 2001.
When contacted on Thursday, the member secretary of UPPCB, Dr CS Bhatt said: “I cannot say anything now, as I will have to look into it.�
When contacted on Wednesday, the chief environmental officer, UPPCB, who is also the nodal officer of the board for NOCs, Dr GN Mishra, said: “The maximum time taken by us to grant an NOC to even large industries in the ‘red category’, according to the Environment Protection Act, 1986, is four months. The only reason for any pending NOCs is if the industrial unit requires a public hearing or if it is the sensitive areas of Agra and Dehradun. In such cases the matter is referred to the Government of India.�
However, from the total list of 68 pending NOCs (as on March 28, 2003), information is awaited from the Government of India in only one case, while in the case of two NOCs, public hearings are yet to be conducted. In the case of the 22 NOCs delayed inordinately, the matter has been pending either with the UPPCB or the regional officer (RO) of UPPCB. Interestingly, one particular application for NOC has been pending with the UPPCB since November 2, 2001. It took the board almost a year after the application, to issue a letter to the RO (on October 28, 2002) and the matter has been pending ever since.
According to a board official: “Earlier, a four-member committee of chief environmental officer-level officials would examine applications for NOCs. However, this committee has been scrapped since the past few years and now the concerned circle officer sends a report to the member secretary, which is forwarded to the chairman of UPPCB. This creates an unnecessary delay. Comparatively, in Punjab and Haryana for example, NOCs are granted for medium and low polluting industries within a month, while NOCs for highly polluting industries are granted within a maximum of three months.�