Web Portal to Monitor Environmental Approvals in India
Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar
The Digital India dream will only be realized if the government carries out proper requirement analysis, cost-benefit analysis, return-on-investment (RoI) analysis, and impact analysis for each technology-based project. The findings of these analyses should be made public.
Plus, the government procedures should immediately be changed to eliminate the need of physical interaction between citizens and government officials for various citizen services because physical meetings lead to corruption. Let everything happen online, and it is possible.
A new web portal was launched Tuesday for online submission and monitoring of environmental approvals for mining of sand and minor minerals.
Launching the web portal at a workshop on mining of sand and minor minerals, India’s Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar, said that the web portal will lead to the empowerment of the project proponent, as it not only enhances transparency of the entire application process, but also enables the proponents to track their applications online.
The Minister said that the web portal is a district-level, web-based and role-based workflow application for online submission and monitoring of proposals for Category B’2’projects.
The web-based application automates the entire tracking of proposals, which includes online submissions of a new proposal, editing / updating the details of proposals at each stage of the workflow.
The system is based on web architecture. Some of the features of the application include: submission of all projects in a single window interface; facilitate management in effective monitoring; delays in the clearance process can be ascertained; a unique ID for each proposal for future reference; On-the-fly generation of all required reports; automatic mailer notification to take instance action; accessible from any PC having internet facility and different types of privileges / roles for users as per their responsibilities.
Earlier, addressing the workshop on mining of sand and minor minerals, the Environment Minister emphasised that that the government has changed the whole system of distribution of natural resources.
He said that technological tools like satellite mapping will be used for identifying spots where sustainable sand mining can be allowed. He also said that satellite mapping and bar-coded receipts will help in curbing illegal sand mining and illegal transportation of sand.
Photo courtesy: Ministry of Environment, Government of India
