Pollution control board simplifies procedures for grant of CTE, CTO

Chandigarh, October 25

The Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) has further simplified the procedures for the grant of consent to establish (CTE) and consent to operate (CTO).

Giving this information here today, Environment Minister Capt Abhimanyu said as a result of simplification of procedures, there had been a drastic decrease in the pendency of CTE and CTO in six months. The board processed 1,586 applications of CTE and 7,201 applications of CTO in one year.

He said the industrial units and projects covered under the red and orange categories of the highly polluting and polluting nature are required to obtain the CTE and CTO under the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, and Authorisation under Hazardous Waste (MH & TM) Rules, 2008, from the HSPCB.

A time limit of maximum 120 days has been stipulated in these Acts and rules for deciding the applications received by the board for the grant of CTE and authorisation. He said the state government had increased the clearance period of industries in the red category from two years to five years and in the orange category from three years to 10 years.

The Environment Minister said efforts were being made by the board to clear the applications much earlier than the prescribed time limit of 120 days, that is, within 90 days. In the past six months, the time taken to decide such applications had been brought down considerably. On April 16, 796 cases of CTE and CTO were pending for more than 90 days. This figure has come down to 150 as on October 16.

Capt Abhimanyu said in the context of streamlining and simplification of procedure to deal with and decide the consent applications, the board had recently prescribed the time limits for clearing the applications for the CTE and CTO at the level of different officials dealing with consent management. —TNS