Source: hindustantimes.com
The Jharkhand government’s five big-ticket projects, including Smart
City, AIIMS and 500-bed Dumka hospital, got the much-awaited
environmental clearance (EC) from the State Level Environment Impact
Assessment Authority (SEIAA), officials said on Wednesday.
SEIAA
chairman SEH Kazmi said, the environmental clearance for five building
construction projects -civic tower, convention centre, Rabindra Bhawan
in Ranchi, AIIMS Deoghar and 500-bed hospital building in Dumka- was
given in SEIAA’s 74th meeting held on Tuesday.
Construction work
of multistorey civic tower and convention centre under Ranchi Smart City
scheme were stopped for want of environmental clearance around three
months back.
The Centre had picked Ranchi under its ambitious
Smart City project in May 2016. Jharkhand is developing country’s first
Greenfield smart city project on an area of 656 acres of land, acquired
by the state government from Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC)
Limited.
Vice-president,
Venkaiah Naidu on September 9 in 2017 laid the foundation stones of
three major projects such as convention centre, urban civic tower (UCT)
and Jharkhand urban planning management institute (JUPMI)-worth around
Rs 700 crore. Barring JUPMI, two other projects were waiting for the
required EC.
Chief executive officer (CEO) of Ranchi Smart City
Corporation Limited (RSCCL), Amit Kumar said, “With getting clearance,
mobilisation of building materials and labour force have been started
from Wednesday. Now, the projects are expected to progress with its
schedule.”
However, the project proposals were given clearance
with certain conditions. “We have decided to grant environmental
clearance to the project proposals with conditions recommended by the
State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) subject to if remaining plots of
the projects are found to be ‘Jungle Jhari (forest bush)’ in future,
the project proponent will have to abide by the provisions of Forest
(Conservation) Act, 1980,” said SEIAA member secretary Kamlesh Pandey.
Meanwhile,
the upcoming All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which is
coming up at Devipur in Deoghar, was also granted the clearance.
Foundation of the institute on 272 acres of land was laid in May last
year. The construction work of the building is in progress.
Teachers’
recruitment process for AIIMS has already begun. A recruitment notice
by AIIMS Patna was issued recently for appointment of eight professors,
11 additional professors, 13 associate professors and 30 assistant
professors. If sources in the health department are to be believed, the
session of the institute will begin from August this year with 50 seats
of MBBS.
Similarly, SEIAA also granted environmental clearance to
500bed hospital coming up in Dumka district. Besides, the Rs 155-crore
Rabindra Bhawan, proposed to be a cultural hub of Ranchi, also got the
clearance for its speeding construction.