Minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey Explained Impact of PARIVESH Portal in Lok Sabha

PARIVESH is a web based, role-based workflow application which has been developed for online submission and monitoring of the proposals submitted by the proponents seeking for Environmental (EC), Forest (FC), Wildlife (WL) and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) clearances. Main aim and objective of the PARIVESH portal is to provide a “single window” solution by process automation of aforementioned four major clearances through process & data synchronization, leveraging emerging technologies such as GIS, Advance Data Analytics etc for an expeditious, transparent and effective decision making without compromising on the environmental safeguards.

This information was given by Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Shri Ashwini Kumar Choubey in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

In pursuance of the spirit of ‘Digital India’ and capturing the essence of Minimum Government and Maximum Governance, the government had launched a single window portal “PARIVESH (Pro Active and Responsive Facilitation by Interactive and Virtuous Environmental Single-window Hub)” on 10.08.2018 at Central level and on 16.08.2019 at State level for handling four major clearances as mentioned in reply to para (a) above.As per the details available on PARIVESH Portal, the total number of clearances (EC, FC, WL and CRZ)  granted since inception, is as under:

Ministry of Environment, forest and Climate Change has taken several measures through policy and technological interventions in order to remove redundancy and to streamline the clearance process with the environmental safeguards. Due to the above measures, the average time taken for grant of EC and CRZ clearance at the central level has reduced significantly from more than 150 days in 2019 and 102 days in 2020 to less than 70 days in 2022, respectively. Similarly, average time taken for grant of ‘in-principle’ FC approval has been calculated to be ~180 days for the financial year (FY) 2021-22 against 188 days in the previous FY.

The existing PARIVESH portal launched at the Central level in August 2018 has met its objectives and facilitated uninterrupted services to the industries even during difficult period of CoVID. However, in order to enhance the Users experience, scope of existing PARIVESH has been expanded to ensure due diligence and adherence to environmental safeguards while examining project proposals by including new functionalities based on emerging technologies, such as GIS, advance Data Analytics etc. Some of the transformational modules includedin the expanded scope are: Know Your Approval (KYA) moduleto provide the tentative list of clearances required and to support the project proponent in assessing the environmental sensitivity and planning of the project before its execution; Decision Support System (DSS) a spatial-based visualization and analytical module to provide tools for exploration of the project proximity andto help the expert committees and regulatory authority in taking a considered decision in expeditious manner; Common Application Form (CAF) and Application Form Management module to minimize the repetitive efforts of the Users and at the same time to ensure the single version of the truth across all applicable clearances and Compliance Management module to ensurereduction in compliance burden and improving ease of doing business. However, all processing of proposals for grant of EC is on the basis of EIA/EMP, examined by the duly constituted Expert Appraisal Committees (EACs) and final approval is given only after incorporating general and specific conditions so as to ensure compliances of environmental standards and safeguards.

Grant of clearances/approvals under different Acts and Rules is a continuous process. Proposals received for various activities are examined / appraisedas per the procedure defined in different Acts and Rules. Prompt decision is taken by the Central Government on the proposals which are complete in all respect as per the timeline prescribed in different Acts and Rules/Guidelines.