Stage One: Screening

In one line

Screening applies only to Category B projects and asks one question: does this project need an environmental impact assessment report at all?

In the wording a student can write in an examination: stage 1 of paragraph 7(i) of the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification 2006 provides that in the case of Category B projects or activities this stage entails the scrutiny of an application seeking prior environmental clearance made in Form 1 by the concerned State Expert Appraisal Committee, for determining whether or not the project requires further environmental studies for the preparation of an environmental impact assessment for its appraisal, depending upon the nature and location specificity of the project; that the projects requiring an assessment report shall be termed Category B1 and the remaining projects shall be termed Category B2 and will not require an assessment report; and that for categorisation into B1 or B2, except for item 8(b), the Ministry shall issue appropriate guidelines from time to time.

The one question screening asks

Does the project need further environmental studies?

That is the whole of it. Screening does not decide whether the project is acceptable, whether the site is suitable or what conditions should attach. It decides whether the appraisal that follows will be conducted on a full assessment report or on the application form alone.

Who asks it. The State Expert Appraisal Committee, since screening applies only to Category B.

On what material. The application in Form 1, and for construction projects Supplementary Form 1A, with the pre-feasibility report or conceptual plan filed under paragraph 6.

On what test. The nature and location specificity of the project.

Those two words carry the reasoning. Nature is about the activity: what it uses, what it emits, what it consumes. Location specificity is about where it is: whether the site is one where the same activity would have different and larger consequences. A small unit in an industrial estate and the same unit beside a river are the same nature and different location specificity.

Why Category A is not screened

Because the Schedule has already screened it. A project is in Category A because its potential impacts are extensive enough, by the thresholds in the Schedule, for the Central Government to decide it. Having been placed there, it goes straight to scoping and always requires an assessment report.

And the General Condition operates before screening, not at it. A Category B project located in whole or in part within five kilometres of the boundary of a protected area notified under the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972, a critically polluted area identified by the Central Pollution Control Board, an eco-sensitive area notified under section 3(2) of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, or an inter-State or international boundary is appraised at the Central level as Category A, so it is never screened either. The distance is ten kilometres only for river valley projects in item 1(c), thermal power plants in item 1(d), industrial estates and parks in item 7(c) and common hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facilities in item 7(d); and against item 8 the Schedule says that the General Conditions shall not apply. That is location specificity applied by the Schedule itself, in a rule rather than a judgment.