Govt to revamp Parivesh portal
3 min read . Updated: 24 May 2023, 11:06 PM IST
PremiumThe Parivesh website that provides details on the environmental impact of projects, stopped updating details on environment, forest, wildlife and coastal regulation zone clearances regularly from September 2022
The government is revamping the existing Parivesh portal of the environment ministry to bring more transparency into the system and add public domain details of project proposals and environment and forest clearances, said Union minister for environment, forest and climate change Bhupendra Yadav.
“To bring more transparency, we have already started the single window integrated environment management system Parivesh which was drawn by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 10 August 2018. After covid, with some suggestions from the industry and other experts, we are increasing the capacity of Parivesh ," the minister said at CII Summit.
“With the help of KYA model, we will provide the facility of project proponents to access the environmental sensitivity and planning of the project before seeking approval," the minister said.
“I feel this will provide and save resources like time and reduce the financial burden of project proponent."
The second improvement being made is that project proponent will play an administrative role of mapping the employee against the project proposal on the upgraded Parivesh portal. This would help the project proponent to access environment and forest clearances.
“Beside this, there are three major improvements on the Parivesh portal being made. The first is forest inbuild GIS clearance which would help project proponents in validating the location of the project, upload data associated with location. The Second is that in the new Parivesh, the environment ministry is going to develop application-based module that will revive and reputative efforts of the users and at the same time will ensure that the similar version of the truth across all applicable places. Third, introduction of payment gateway in Parivesh 2.0 will further facilitate the user to do ease of doing business by allowing them to make online payment against. The upgradation is currently at the work in progress stage," Yadav explained.
The Parivesh website that provides details on the environmental impact of projects, stopped updating details on environment, forest, wildlife and coastal regulation zone clearances regularly from September 2022 after the ministry decided that such information would be provided only when sought under the right to information (RTI) Act in the new website. The decision to make some information available under RTI was taken to protect the interests of project developers according to media reports.
Parivesh is a web-based workflow application which has been developed for online submission and monitoring of the proposals submitted by the proponents for seeking Environment, Forest, Wildlife and CRZ Clearances from Centre, state and district level authorities. It automates the entire tracking of proposals that includes online submission of a new proposal, editing or updating the details of proposals and displays status of the proposals at each stage of the workflow.
The new portal will provide information related to environment and forest clearances, minutes of meetings of expert appraisal and forest advisory committees, proposal and clearance details of coastal regulation zone.
Further, the ministry is upgrading the Parivesh portal to make it more user friendly, integrating the latest IT features which would make the process faster, versatile and more efficient and effective.
The minister in the same event urged people and industries to adopt lifestyles that are inclusive of environmental growth and sustainability. He said that this World Environment Day, the focus of celebrations is on mission LIFE and urged individuals and industries to contribute to this initiative of the government. In his message, he conveyed India’s vision and commitment to combat climate change.
Yadav praised India’s initiatives for sustainable and inclusive development and mentioned that India has overachieved its commitment of cutting down its reliability on fossil fuels for power. He added that India’s power generation sector is further working upon adoption of super critical and ultra critical technologies to improve efficiency of power generation plants in India. The minister enumerated numerous pathways for attaining a low carbon footprint.