Starting July 1, all forest clearances for industry and infrastructure projects will go online, to be followed by online environmental approvals from September 1, Anil Swarup, Additional Secretary, Union Cabinet Secretariat, said here on Tuesday.
Inaugurating the Karnataka Government’s e-portal to track public and private sector projects above Rs. 100 crore that have got delayed, Mr. Swarup, who heads the Project Monitoring Group (PMG) of the Cabinet Committee on Investment under the Prime Minister, said various Ministries were being gradually brought into a transparent, digitised system of fast-tracking large projects of over Rs. 1,000 crore.
About Karnataka’s new ePMS (electronic Project Management System), he said this was planned to be the first state-level portal but five States had already adopted it. He urged industries, “If you have a problem go to the portal and upload the issue. We are there to look into it.”
Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee launched the portal at an event hosted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry.
Mr. Swarup said, “We are now digitising the entire process [of project clearances.] We are making one Ministry after the other to understand the process. From July 1, forest clearances will be moved on the web. On September 1, environment clearances will go live on the web.”
