As per the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008, the ________ shall be the nodal Ministry to deal with the transboundary movement of the hazardous wastes and t

Question

As per the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008, the ________ shall be the nodal Ministry to deal with the transboundary movement of the hazardous wastes and to grant permission for transit of the hazardous wastes through any part of India.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, is the nodal ministry the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008 designate for this role. Framed under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, these rules govern how hazardous waste is generated, stored, treated, disposed of and — where it crosses India's borders — moved into, out of, or through the country, in line with India's obligations under the Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes. Because hazardous waste management is fundamentally an environmental-protection function, the rules place the Ministry of Environment and Forests at the centre of the process: an applicant seeking to import, export, or transit hazardous waste through Indian territory must apply to the Ministry, which examines the application (taking into account comments from the concerned State Pollution Control Board) before granting or refusing permission. This concentrates authority over an environmentally sensitive, cross-border activity in the ministry whose core mandate is environmental regulation, rather than splitting it across ministries handling internal security, diplomacy, or trade policy.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) The Ministry of Home Affairs handles internal security, law and order, and border administration, not environmental regulation. While hazardous waste crossing India's borders does raise security-adjacent questions of what enters the country, the specific statutory role of examining and permitting transboundary hazardous-waste movement under the 2008 Rules is assigned to the environment ministry, not the home ministry.  (c) The Ministry of External Affairs conducts India's foreign relations and diplomatic engagement, including India's participation in international conventions such as Basel — but conducting diplomacy around a convention is different from being the domestic nodal authority that receives applications and grants permission for hazardous-waste transit under India's own rules. That operational, permission-granting role sits with the Ministry of Environment and Forests.  (d) The Ministry of Commerce and Industry oversees India's trade policy and industrial promotion, and hazardous-waste movement can certainly intersect with cross-border trade, particularly where waste is imported for recycling or reuse. But the 2008 Rules do not make trade policy the deciding lens for whether such movement is permitted — environmental risk is — so the nodal role is given to the Ministry of Environment and Forests rather than the commerce ministry.

Concept: The Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2008 were notified under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 to regulate the generation, handling, treatment, storage, disposal and — critically — the cross-border movement of hazardous waste into, out of, and through India, implementing India's obligations under the Basel Convention. The Ministry of Environment and Forests is designated the nodal ministry for transboundary movement: applicants must route their applications through it, and it decides on permission after considering the concerned State Pollution Control Board's views, with the rules also barring the import of hazardous waste for disposal (import is permitted only for recycling, recovery or reuse).

State PCS 2025 Q35 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q35 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer