Coming down heavily on the Union Environment Ministry for introducing more than 30 amending notes diluting the provisions of the EIA notification, since the draft EIA 2020 was publicly rejected, over 100 civil society organisations and individuals have written to Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, asking him to accept and acknowledge the CSIR-NEERI report. They want him to put in place a transparent and independent mechanism, to identify and incorporate the comments received regarding the draft notification.

In March 2020, the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change had published the draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2020. “Over 20 lakh comments were sent to the ministry to register the objections, improvements, and implications of the proposed changes in the Environment Clearance Process for most industrial and infrastructural projects on the environment and society at large,” said the undersigned of the letter, in an excerpt from it in a press release they issued. The ministry then asked CSIR-NEERI to collate and compile the comments and objections for draft EIA 2020.