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By Priya Yadav

Haryana has taken a step closer towards achieving the desired goal of ‘Ease of Doing Business’ to help entrepreneurs establish and operate their industry in the State, by expediting process of granting Consent to Establish (CTE) and Consent to Operate (CTO), required mandatorily and issued by the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB).

Haryana Environment Minister Captain Abhimanyu said that in the past six months, the simplification of procedures has helped clear a large backlog of applications pending with the Pollution Control Board. The Board has processed 1,586 applications of CTE and 7,201 applications of CTO during the past one year.

The industrial units and projects covered under the Red and Orange categories of ‘Highly Polluting’ and ‘Polluting in Nature’ are required to obtain the CTE and CTO under the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, apart from Authorisation under the Hazardous Waste (MH & TM) Rules, 2008, from 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 grant of CTE and Authorisation. Earlier, all applications were being decided at the level of Chairman of the Board involving various levels of officers in processing the cases.

But now, HSPCB has delegated the powers to all the Regional Officers of the Board in the field to decide the applications for CTE in the case of seven types of industries and projects, and for CTO in case of small-scale industries in the Orange category, so that less time is taken by the Board in deciding the applications and they are decided in 60 days. Necessary directions in this regard have been issued by the Board, said Captain Abhimanyu.

The Environment Minister said that efforts are being made by the Board to clear the applications much earlier than the prescribed time limit of 120 days, that is, within a period of 90 days. In the past six months, the time taken to decide such applications has been considerably brought down. On April 16, 2015, as many as 796 cases of CTE and CTO were pending for more than 90 days. This figure has come down to 150 as on October 16, 2015.

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