NATIONAL ACCREDITATION BOARD FOR EDUCATION & TRAINING QUALITY COUNCIL OF INDIA QCI Office, 2 nd Floor, Institution of Engineers building, BSZ Marg, New Delhi Accreditation Scheme for EIA Consultant Organizations Minutes of 9 th Accreditation Committee Meeting for Review of Decisions held on April 13, 2012 from 14 00 Hrs to 17 30 Hrs Present 1. Shri. Paritosh C.Tyagi - Chairman 2. Prof. B. B. Dhar - Member 3. Mr. N.S. Tiwana - Member Leave of absence was granted to Dr. S. Devotta, Dr. Asha Rajvanshi and Prof. J.K. Garg NABET Secretariat was represented by: Mr. A. K. Ghose Principal Advisor, Dr. Hari Prakash Joint Director, Abhay Sharma Executive and Ms. Preeti Pawaria The following were discussed/ decided: 1. The minutes of the 8 th Accreditation Committee Meetings held on March 09, 2012 were considered and approved. 2. Cases put up for consideration (as per Sl. No. of receipt by NABET) i. Transit Surveys, Karnataka ii. Ace Engineers & Consultants, Patiala iii. Waste Encare (India) Pvt. Ltd., Thane iv. Projects & Development India Limited, Noida v. Anand Consultants, Ahmedabad vi. Ramji Mines Envirotech, Jaipur 3. Cases considered: i. Transit Surveys, Karnataka The grounds mentioned by the Consultants for the review and the Accreditation Committee s decisions on the same are mentioned in the table below Points raised by Transit surveys Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 1
Points raised by Transit surveys Mr. C.S. Dhaveji was proposed as FAE for LU, AP and NV. He was not recommended for NV due to inadequate knowledge and was not approved for AP due to inadequate experience in AP control aspects. He has over 45 years professional exp- 20 years in Mining Ind. and 25 years as consultant on Mining and Environment. Mr. Dhaveji has planned and monitored implementation measures in AP, NV, SHW, HG He has developed mathematical model based on Gaussian Model used for monitoring AAQ values, which was well appreciated by MoEF Advisory Committee. We have submitted a list of papers authored by C.S. Dhaveji, his project wise contribution and Atmospheric Dispersion-Gaussian Model applied by him. He may kindly be re-considered as FAE- AP, NV Further documentary evidences were presented by the AO in support of Sh. Dhaveji s experience in Air Pollution monitoring and control for opencast mining projects. In view of the above, Sh. Dhaveji is approved for AP (OC Mining only-) Cat. B. Since Mr. Dhaveji was not recommended for NV on knowledge grounds, AC found no rationale to re-consider its decision for this FA (NV). ii. Ace Engineers & Consultants, Patiala Request for the review of decision of Accreditation Committee as received from Ace Engineers & Consultants, Patiala was discussed in detail. Points raised by Ace Engineers & Consultants Mr. Uma Shankar Sain was proposed as our in-house expert for RH. He meets the educational and experience requirements of the Scheme which was verified by the assessors during our Office Assessment. However, he was not approved due to inadequate EIA experience as given in AC MoM dt. January 31, 2012 He was recommended by the assessors. He may kindly be re-considered as FAE- RH. No further relevant evidence of experience for Sh. Sain was presented which was overlooked earlier during the assessment/ approval process. Hence, the request of the AO to reconsider the experience of Mr. Uma Shankar Sain is not acceded to. Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 2
Points raised by Ace Engineers & Consultants One of our experts, Mr. Yash Pal Jain was approved as EC and FAE both. However, his candidature has not been considered separately. Since NABET Scheme qualifies a person for both EC and FAE separately as two identities, kindly re-consider his candidature as two, as an EC and as FAE. Mr. B.L. Gohal was proposed as our inhouse expert for SE. He is having more than 25 years of teaching experience and more than 2 years experience in EIA related projects and over 10 years experience in general Socio-economic activities. The assessors were from science background and the SE expert was from economic background (and thus fair assessment may not have been done). Kindly re-consider his candidature as FAE- SE. NABET Scheme indicates that an expert may be proposed and approved both as an EC and FAE, provided s/he meets the Scheme/s requirements but at the same time the organization must have at-least three in-house experts one eligible EC and two other eligible IH FAEs. The Scheme does not permit an individual to be counted as two. Hence the request of the AO to consider Mr. Jain s candidature as two separate identities is not acceded to., Mr. Gohal was interacted in detail by NABET assessors. During such interaction he could not give any evidence of his involvement in EIA related work as mentioned by the AO and he agreed that he had not carried out any work directly related to EIA. Hence, Mr. Gohal was not recommended by assessors for not having minimum 1 year EIA related experience in the FA as required by the Scheme. As regards the employment status of Mr. B.L. Gohal as IH/ Empanelled expert, in all their submissions ending with e.mail dated Dec. 28, 2011 prior to the office assessment on Jan. 3-4, 2012, Mr. Gohal was shown as an empanelled expert. It was only after office assessment and Jan. 30, 2012 that AO claimed Mr. Gohal as IH expert from Oct., 2011 (which contradicts their earlier mail dated Dec. 28, 2011 mentioned above). Moreover, no change in employment status of an expert after office assessment can be entertained. The final status of the AO remains unchanged in respect of qualifying experts meeting Scheme s requirements- 1 IH EC (Mr. Yashpal Jain) 1 other IH FAE (Mr. Vishal Duggal) Thus, the AO does not have minimum 3 IH experts to meet the Scheme s requirements. Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 3
iii. Waste Encare (India) Pvt. Ltd., Thane Request for the review of decision of Accreditation Committee as received from Waste Encare (India) Pvt. Ltd., Thane was discussed in detail. Points raised by Waste Encare (India) Pvt. Ltd. Our organization was not accredited due to non availability of 3 eligible in-house experts. However, 2 of our experts namely, Sh. S. Athavale & Mr. Anand Apte were recommended both as ECs and as FAEs making a total of 4 eligible experts. Nowhere in your Scheme it is mentioned i. that 2 R FAEs other than the EC is required. Hence, e the organization has 3 eligible inhouse experts and our application should be re-considered. i Kindly also clarify on your assessment of v. empanelled experts and give us at-least 6 months time to hire them accordingly. NABET Scheme clearly mentions that an organization must have at-least three inhouse experts one eligible IH EC and two other eligible IH FAEs. The Scheme does not permit an individual to be counted as two. Hence, the request of the AO to consider candidature of Sh. Athavale and Mr. Apte twice making a total of 4 eligible experts cannot be acceded to. iv. Projects & Development India Limited, Noida Request for the review of decision of Accreditation Committee as received from Projects & Development India Limited, Noida was discussed in detail Points raised Projects & Development India Limited (PDIL) Our organization was accredited vide AC MoM dt. May 10, 2011. However, vide your mail dt September 02, 2011, we were informed that we were falling short of 1 in-house expert for meeting the minimum requirement of accreditation as per the Scheme. Accordingly, we proposed following three experts for the assessment on 03/11/11: i. Sh. A.K. Singh ii. Sh. B. Prakash iii. Sh. S.K. Sinha Unfortunately, Sh. S.K. Sinha could not Sh. S.K. Sinha proposed as FAE -SE by PDIL could not be present during assessment on at QCI 03/11/11 due to health problems, documentary evidence for which was furnished by PDIL. Sh. Sinha may now be called for assessment. Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 4
appear for the assessment due to sudden development of health problems. The documentary evidence for same is submitted to NABET. Due to absentia of Sh. Sinha, our organization fell short of the minimum 3 in-house experts. We are again submitting his Bio-data for favorable consideration so that we remain accredit with NABET and our clients do not suffer. Kindly consider his candidature and assess him. v. Anand Consultants, Ahmedabad Request for the review of decision of Accreditation Committee as received from Anand Consultants was discussed in detail Points raised by Anand Consultants Mr. Tariq M. Khatri was proposed as our in-house expert for AP, WP and SHW. He was not recommended due to inadequate EIA related experience in the FAs. May kindly note that all of his experience (23 years) has been with Environmental Engineering Consultants, of which 6 years has been with Semi-Govt. organization- Gujarat Ind. and Technical Consultancy Organization Ltd.(GITCO). Probably his having studied in Gujarati Language and lack of fluency in English has been their stumbling block while trying to express themselves during assessment. Kindly re-consider his experience and approve him as FAE-AP, WP, SHW Ms. Purvi Patel was proposed as FAE-not AP, AQ, WP and SHW. However, she was not recommended due to inadequate EIA related experience in the FAs. Her stated experience of 5.4 years consists of > 3.4 years of experience with As per assessment by NABET assessors during office assessment, the experience of Mr. Khatri is mainly related to laboratory work and he was neither conversant with Environmental aspects nor Impacts. Mr. Khatri is a Masters Degree holder from a University. Language problem should not be a stumbling block for such an expert to express his competency in functional areas. Hence, there is no ground to re-consider the decision in this respect. Ms. Patel was found inadequate in her knowledge of FAs and their EIA linkages. Her experience is mainly related to desk job for compilation of the monitoring reports etc. Ms. Patel also is a Masters Degree holder from a University. Language Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 5
Environmental Engineering Consultants during which she has continuously dealt with EIA activities. Probably her having studied in Gujarati Language and lack of fluency in English have been their stumbling block while trying to express themselves during assessment. Kindly re-consider her experience and approve her as FAE- AP, AQ, WP and SHW problem should not be a stumbling block for such an expert to express her competency in functional areas. Hence, there is no ground to re-consider the decision in this respect vi. Ramji Mines Envirotech, Jaipur Request for the review of decision of Accreditation Committee as received from Ramji Mines Envirotech, Jaipur was discussed in detail Points raised by Ramji Mines Envirotech Our organization was not accredited for the reasons stated as below on QCI website: i. Submission giving number of EIAs prepared in last three years is contradictory and mis-leading. ii. An expert has been shown as full time employee in a govt. organization (ICFRE) and Ramji Mines at the same time in year 2009-10 For same the clarifications are as under: 1. 41 EIAs include EIAs conducted under Aravalli Notifications of 7/5/92 whereas till financial year 2009-10 only 1 EIA was completed and 4 were under process under 2006 Notification. 2. Shri Ajay Kumar - has left ICFRE on 28/2/10 and since 10/7/10 he is working as Sr. Executive. The information provided by AO was true and correct and there was no perversity in the document. The AO has agreed that the explanation submitted by them for the said clarifications were confusing and self contradictory. Hence, there is no ground to re-consider AC decision. The AO may apply afresh if so desired. The meeting ended with a vote of thanks to the Chair. Vipin Sahni Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 6
Director NABET Minutes of 9 th AC Meeting for Review of Decisions: April 13, 2012 Page 7