Adani Green advisor part of environment ministry’s hydel clearance panel

An advisor to Adani Green Energy Limited is a member of one of the Centre’s Expert Appraisal Committees before which the company’s hydro project proposals are placed for clearance, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

Adani Green is a renewable energy company owned by the Gautam Adani-led Adani Group.

The advisor, Janardan Choudhary, was appointed by the Union environment ministry as one of the seven non-institutional members of the committee for hydroelectricity and river valley projects on September 27, when the panel was reconstituted.

The Environmental Impact Assessment notification issued in 2006 under the Environment Protection Act, 1986 mandates prior environmental clearance for certain types of projects. There are ten such panels that examine project proposals across different sectors. The committee members have three-year tenures.

Chaudhary attended the first meeting of the reconstituted committee on October 17, The Indian Express reported, citing the minutes of the meeting. On that day, Adani Green’s 1,500 megawatt Tarali pumping storage project in Maharashtra’s Satara district was taken up for consideration, the newspaper reported.

The renewable energy company had reportedly sought an amendment to the project’s Terms of Reference, which define the overall planning, to revise the layout after it realised that the proposed water conductor system passed “just below an existing wind farm”. The company had contended that construction below the...

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