The National Green Tribunal has agreed to hear a plea challenging the November 9, 2012 environment clearance (EC) granted to Lavasa Corporation Ltd for its $ 31 billion hillside township project in Pune district of Maharashtra.

The Tribunal directed Lavasa, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) to file their replies to the petition of a project-hit Pune native before July 24.

MUMBAI: If the state is faced with a drought-like situation almost all year round, water experts suggest it's time to rise above party politics and conce n trate on core water resource po licies and cropping patterns. "State policies only pay lip service to equitable water distribution . They spell out water distribution for command areas (around dams and waterbodies ) and landholders, but fail to address pockets which fall outside either of these," says Mandar Sathe of voluntary organization Prayas that works on resource management .

The controversial Lavasa Hill City project in Pune district has attracted the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's attention. Lavasa is being developed by the HCC Group.

The CAG, in its latest report, said: “The project was driven by private interest rather than public interest. The State Government gave environmental clearance to the project without referring it to the Government of India.”

Not transparent

The report, tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday, pointed out that HCC's selection as a developer by the Maharashtra Government was not transparent.

Coming down hard on the state government on the Lavasa hill town project, the CAG report has said the government bent rules and made amendments to existing laws only to allow the controversial township to be built at the cost of public interest. The report was tabled in the Assembly on Tuesday.

Observing that the project nods were given without environmental and cabinet approvals, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), on Tuesday, slammed the state government for “total lack of transparency” in the selection of the Lavasa hill station project in Pune district. Claiming that the Lavasa project was driven by private interests rather than the public one, the CAG report said that expression of interests were not invited by the government for the development of Lavasa, thus made the process non-transparent.

The tribunal has asked the MoEF and the state of Maharashtra to file their replies on Lavasa's plea

The National Green Tribunal today deferred the hearing of Lavasa Corporation Ltd's petition challenging the environment ministry's decision to impose conditions with the environmental clearance accorded to the firm's $31 billion hillside township project near Pune. The hearing was adjourned for July 19, in wake of cases pending in the Bombay High Court on issues relating to the project where the tribunal's jurisdiction to hear Lavasa's plea is to be decided.

The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), yet to be tabled in the state legislature, has mentioned the undue favouritism given to Lavasa that led to a revenue loss of Rs13 crore. The project was given the concessions in stamp duty (Rs4.31 crore), registration (Rs5.30 crore) and nazarana (Rs3.71 crore) taxes despite having just ‘industry’ status; industry projects do not enjoy these concessions.

Have we become so blind that we can’t see wrinkles on the faces of farmers and their land? Live and let live goes the saying, so why are only farmers forced to toil so hard? These lines run like tickers along photographs depicting farm distress on apulkee.org — apulkee means a sense of belonging — a website run by a group of 20 young software engineers from Vidarbha, all employed in Pune. Their desire to help distressed farmers back home in Vidarbha has now spread across the world, with 1,400 members, all originally from Vidarbha, signing up so far.

Takes it to task for lands allotted to undertakings lying idle over years, also for lack of maintaining data base

The Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has rapped the Maharashtra government for lack of a mechanism to carry out a periodic review of the lands allotted to Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and other state undertakings. Such a mechanism, according to the CAG, was necessary to ensure that land not required by these undertakings would be available to the government for other welfare measures.