He also said because it was a long road, “the issuance of the certification would be done in phases. The project can go on and we can also be doing our own bit of it.”
On which comes first between scoping, for which the ministry gave preliminary certification, and the Environmental Impact Assessment, the minister explained, “The Environmental and social Impact Assessment goes through eight stages and scoping is one of the stages of EIA. The way it goes is that the proponents submit an application and proposal, then we do an internal screening on it and on the basis of that screening we can now categorise the project.”
