CPCB should help meet green norms: Bhupender Yadav
Union Minister Bhupender Yadav emphasized the CPCB's role in environmental capacity building, advocating for new norms that align economy and ecology.
Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav said on Monday that the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) should be the umbrella organisation for capacity building in environmental matters of the country, and become a mentor to ensure compliance with regulations.
Addressing an event in New Delhi on the occasion of 51st Foundation Day of CPCB, Yadav stressed that the control board will play an important role in achieving “Make in India” in manufacturing. He added that there is a need to evolve environmental norms so economy and ecology go hand-in-hand.
The Minister said that rules and regulations would not be effective unless there’s a behavioural change, as he mentioned recent government reforms such as the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023 (decriminalising provisions) and Environment Audit Rules, 2025. “Thus, environmental protection should be a part of our collective environmental consciousness,” he added.
“As the country moves towards the goal of becoming a 5 trillion-dollar economy, with historic GST reforms to be implemented from Monday, there is a need to evolve environmental regulations and norms so that economy and ecology go hand-in-hand. Collaboration with IITs, reputed academic institutes and leading research bodies is required for development of new technologies and expanding environmental laboratories in the country. We need to come out with new low-polluting alternatives and cleaner technologies for strengthening Make-In-India, along with ensuring wider availability of these technologies,” Yadav said.
He also referred to environment ministry’s August 29 notification. HT reported on September 3 that the ministry has put in place an environment monitoring framework comprising environment auditing through registered environment auditors (EAs) to enhance the capacity of pollution control boards.
“These rules establish a two-tiered system of auditors and set up a dedicated agency to transparently oversee the process. These rules are designed to supplement the existing monitoring and inspection framework of the government, not to replace it” Yadav had said.
Tier-1 comprises existing government regulator-based review of compliance, including by government agencies like CPCB, State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) and regional offices of the ministry; and tier-2 comprises environment auditor-based mechanism.
“Because when we establish an industry, then they should produce and self regulation should be in place. For environmental norms, we have talked about environmental audits so that our inspector raj is reduced, people can submit their audit reports through a system of environment auditors,” Yadav said on Monday.
“Companies can submit their environment audit, these can be checked, standardised labs should be established in the entire country for implementation of the notification,” he said.
The minister added, “We will have to come out of the era of inspector raj and become regulatory and the most important thing is to become mentors, if we become mentors, then through new technology tools, we will establish new norms for environmental compliance. Environment protection should not be a panic button in society.”
