The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has declined the Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) demand for easing of green clearances for scaling up mobile networks in remote areas. The committee has refused to allow special relaxations for private telecom service providers (TSPs) and infrastructure providers (IPs) to install mobile towers and lay optical fibre cables (OFCs) in forest areas, or to give mobile towers the special status available to communication posts.
Earlier, DoT had requested the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to simplify some of the procedures on green clearances and include mobile towers among the list of critical public infrastructure. As per sources, this would help immensely in scaling up 4G and 5G networks across the country. The key request from DoT was to also allow private TSPs and IPs to install towers and lay OFCs in forest areas, as permitted for various critical public utility projects under the ‘General Approval’ regime.
However, the FAC has held that this was not tenable as the special dispensation was only for public utility projects implemented by a government department and setting up of mobile towers is a commercial activity. The panel has also rejected DoT’s request to consider mobile towers on a par with communication posts. It stated that the density per unit area of mobile towers is much more than communication towers which require more forest land. It added that mobile tower installations involve more disturbances to forests due to ancillary activities.
