The Centre has rejected claims that the new definition of the Aravalli range will allow large-scale mining, asserting that 90 per cent of the region will remain protected and citing a Supreme Court-ordered freeze on new mining leases.
Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav accuses the Congress of spreading misinformation regarding the new definition of the Aravallis and defends the government's commitment to protecting the mountain range while allowing limited, legal mining.
'The natural barrier that is Aravalli, you are demolishing it, then who will stop the desert?' 'In future, I predict that people will roam around with oxygen cylinders in Delhi because they won't be able to breathe.'
Sonia Gandhi criticizes the Modi government's environmental policies, claiming they endanger the Aravalli hills and disregard environmental protection.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and insisted on demands pertaining to the state, including on Fair Recovery Price of sugarcane, All India Institute of Medical Sciences for Raichur, the release of flood relief among others.
India's new climate pledge to the UN could be weakened by its growing use of coal, even as the country plans a 2035 roadmap to cut emissions and boost clean energy.
Janardan Choudhary, a key advisor to Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL), was named as one of the seven non-institutional members by the Union Environment Ministry when it reconstituted the Expert Appraisal Committee for hydroelectricity and river valley projects in September.
Citing poor attendance at the International Yoga Day event on June 21, the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) issued a warning on Monday, saying this month's salaries of the employees who skipped the programme without prior intimation would be withheld, but withdrew the order within hours.
'It concerns the sea and the security of the nation. What has happened is a big tragedy.'
The project will involve scanning lakhs of pages into electronic format, the official said. At present, all sections of the ministry headquarters at Paryavaran Bhawan were full of records. A single wing of Vigyan Sadan at R K Puram has been converted into a record room for files of various divisions.
The 31-storey Adrash Housing Society building should be demolished within three months, the Environment Ministry recommended on Sunday while holding that the scam-tainted project in Mumbai's upmarket Colaba was "unauthorised" and violated the spirit of coastal regulations.
The Environment Ministry was hit by controversies in the year gone by which saw clearances for two big ticket projects -- POSCO and Lavasa -- and exit of Jairam Ramesh as the green minister.
The Comptroller of Auditor General (CAG) on Friday came down heavily on the environment ministry for lapses in implementation of its green schemes whether it was for afforestation, biodiversity, pollution control or creating awareness.
Some more files pertaining to the controversial Mumbai's Adarsh Housing Society have gone missing, this time from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests in New Delhi, a senior Central Bureau of Investigation official said on Saturday.
Maldives police have arrested two serving ministers for allegedly performing black magic on President Mohamed Muizzu, local media reported on Thursday.
The environment ministry is likely to soon issue regulations that will mandate automakers to recycle a specified percentage of steel from old vehicles, starting from the next financial year, according to people familiar with the matter. "We recently held a meeting with members of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam). "The final regulations are likely to be issued in the next 10 days," a government source informed.
A day after the Union ministry of environment and forest suspended the environmental clearances for all the 93 mining leases in Goa, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has said that he will appeal to prime minister to "set things right" in the green ministry headed by Jayanti Natarajan.
A no-nonsense high profile minister, Ramesh, an IIT alumnus and an environmentalist, was perhaps the country's first independent thinking environment minister
The last decision by Jairam Ramesh as environment minister was to ban the use of bulls as performing animals. This means that bulls can no longer be used in jallikattu, a bull-taming sport played in Tamil Nadu during Pongal celebrations.
Fresh smoke was witnessed on Monday at the Deonar dumping ground, where the fire which has been raging for three days now intensified last evening even as people living in the vicinity complained of discomfort due to the fumes emanating from the site.
The environment ministry on Thursday gave its nod to a plan for constructing a grand statue for Maratha warrior king Shivaji in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Mumbai.
The Madhya Pradesh forest department has refused to provide information under the Right to Information Act on management of cheetahs brought from Africa and their cubs born in India.
Ministry sources told Business Standard that necessary action would be taken to amend the Act to include penalty for non-compliance and modify the procedure to decide the penalty and punishment under the Act.
'With technology advancing, we should go all out and put up solar, wind, pumped storage, and battery, and make India go green.'
'Modi knows the people here are opposed to this project, but he is using the might of government to push this port down our throats.'
Posco's mega steel plant in Orissa is inching forward with the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests clearing a proposal under which Posco will plant trees on an area equivalent in size to the forest land where the project is coming up.
Stating that Adarsh Housing Society had brazenly violated the law, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests on Monday ruled out the possibility of regularizing the 31-storey building, at a hearing before the Bombay High Court.
Three years after India declared its goal to become a net-zero economy by 2070, the policy design for achieving the target has begun, with the NITI Aayog forming dedicated multi-sectoral committees to prepare a transition plan. In 2021, India joined a select group of nations that set a target year for becoming net-zero carbon economy. At COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined a five-pronged 'Panchamitra' climate action target for India and committed to a net-zero target by 2070, joining nations like the US, the UK, and China.
Among the new entrants to the Union cabinet, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been given the agriculture and rural development portfolios, Bharatiya Janata Party president J P Nadda the health portfolio and former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar the power portfolio.
'When there are no good roads and no buses plying to villages, your spending on development is skewed.'
Aasked to specify such projects which are passing through tiger corridor or forest areas, Jairam Ramesh said that one is in Madhya Pradesh and the other is in Assam.
Forests Jairam Ramesh's ambitious plan to redesign the institutions of environmental governance has come up against serious resistance from environmental experts who say the concept does not address fundamental problems.
Forest and tribal rights activist Alok Shukla will on Friday receive the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize -- 2024 for successfully leading a community campaign that saved 4.45 lakh acres of biodiversity-rich forests from 21 planned coal mines in Chhattisgarh.
The increased outlay, the ministry says, will be used for river and lake cleaning and pollution control.
Jwala (Namibian name Siyaya) had also given birth to four cubs last March. However, only one of them survived.
The Centre has disallowed installation of mobile towers in core or critical tiger habitats in the country, according to new guidelines by the environment ministry.
While the responses of the candidates were predictable, depending on which side they belonged to, an interesting point slipped through when Rahul Shewale cited the Dharavi Redevelopment Project as a scheme that would add to Mumbai's importance. No big infrastructural project in Mumbai, he said, could be successful without the Centre's nod.
With land acquisition completed and infrastructure work streamlined, India's bullet train dreams are slowly, but finally, inching closer to reality.
An official said that a South African delegation will visit India in February for an assessment of the preparations at the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary.
The Union Environment Ministry sent a office memorandum to the state in this regard following directions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sources said.
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