Rahul terms draft EIA “dangerous”

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said the draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) 2020 is “disgraceful” and “dangerous”, and has the potential to reverse many of the hard fought gains won over the years in the battle to protect the environment.

In a long Facebook post, Mr. Gandhi said the government that is propagating “Swachh Bharat” on one end, is going to give a free hand to highly polluting industries such as coal mining and other mineral mining. If they are labelled “strategic”, they would no longer require EIA clearance, he said.

Habitat destruction

“Neither will highways or railway lines passing through dense forests and other eco-sensitive areas, that will result in the massive hacking down of trees, leading to the destruction of habitats of thousands of endangered species,” Mr. Gandhi wrote.

He said the provision allowing post-facto assessment is a terrible idea. “That is, EIA can be done, after a project has already destroyed the environment,” he wrote.

The Congress leader urged everyone to raise their voice against it.

Silencing stakeholders

“This EIA 2020 draft is a disaster. It seeks to silence the voice of communities who will be directly impacted by the environmental degradation it unleashes. I urge every Indian to rise up and protest against it,” Mr. Gandhi said.

The government, he said, should learn from the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has shown “how fragile human life is”. If EIA 2020 is notified by the Government, Mr. Gandhi said the long term consequences of the widespread environmental degradation will be catastrophic.