The Assam pollution Control Board on 11th January 2022 has notified the guidelines for Processing of Consent Application. As per the provisions of the Water Act, 1974 and Air Act, 1981 mandates processing of CTE/CTO within 120 days, however there has been significant delays in processing the application by the board therefore the following guidelines has been formulated which shall come into force with immediate effect.
- Facilitators shall be trained by the Regional Heads to ensure that the applications are properly filled up by the project proponents before accepting the same.
2. After acceptance of the applications, the industry shall be monitored by our inspecting official with a target to monitor status of installation and operation of Air Pollution Control Devices (APCD), ETP, STP, etc. The required information about the plant, status of earlier CTE/CTO, Authorization/Registration, submission of CTE/CTO fees, submission of Return, etc. shall be collected during the visit. Photographs of observations should be part of the monitoring report.
3. Query, if any, shall be posted only after completion of the monitoring. For query, the project proponent shall be contacted by concerned official through telephone/email with details regarding required documents sought from the industries shall be noted in the OCMMS by marking the note to himself/herself. Subsequently, when documents shall be submitted by the industry through. email/hardcopy, those shall be uploaded by the concerned official in Regional Office. If some queries are not replied by the industries, those will be noted and forwarded to Head Office. If required, officials from Head Office will then visit the industry.
4. Decision has already been taken to exclude the condition of mandatory submission of analysis reports by all the industries along with the application form.
5. For renewal cases irrelevant queries such as CA Certificate, Site Plan, Layout Plan, Land Documents, etc. should be ignored. For regular cases of renewal of CTO, visiting the industry is not mandatory. The official concerned for an industry need not visit the industry, if he/she is confident about the environmental management inside the factory. Small units like hallmarking centre, restaurant with brand name like KFC, Pizza Hut, etc. may not be required to visit every time for renewal of CTO.
6. For standalone DG Sets, RO may ask the unit to submit photographs showing acoustic enclosures, height of the chimney, etc. For such units, field visit is not required. Asking for DG Set emission with analysis report should be avoided and issues of installation of acoustic enclosure and vertical chimneys as per the CPCB guidelines should be focused.
7. Some inspection procedures may be even completed with the help of Video call. In such cases, the concerned official shall make a note of the same.
8. The Regional Heads shall not keep the file with himself/herself for more than (5) working days before assigning to any concerned official.
9. The concerned official in Head Office shall prepare the CTE/CTO orders within five (5) working days after the approved CTE/CTO is marked to the official by the Member Secretary/Chief Env. Engineer.
10. Head Office shall prepare the CTE/CTO & Authorization order and shall send the hard copy of such orders only by Speed Post. Present practice of handing over the CTE/CTO and Authorization orders to the industry representative shall be stopped to discourage the frequent visit of industry representatives to the Head Office. Head Office shall upload the said orders in the OCMMS portal within two working days of issue of such orders. Regional Office shall ensure that the industries write full postal address with pin code in the application.
11. Decision has been taken not to send the copy of the CTE/CTO and Authorization to the Industry Department, Director of Health Services and respective Regional Offices as the uploaded documents can be easily downloaded from our portal by the all stakeholders.
