While the Tamil Nadu state government has, on Monday, voiced against the three-language formula prescribed the Center's recently approved and criticized National Education Policy 2020, the Tamil Nadu Youth groups have now raised their voices against the Center's another controversial draft of the Environment Impact Assessment 2020, in which the youths have demanded the Center to withdraw the draft which goes against the environment. 

According to the reports, seventy-five youth groups in Tamil Nadu and 1720 teenagers below the age of thirty had addressed to Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar demanding him to discard the center's draft of the EIA 2020. In the letter, the youth groups said the center's move to push the draft is irresponsible, reckless, and insensitive to the rights of the young people and future generations.

In the letter, they said that the draft EIA 2020 would be weakening the environment laws under the label of ease of doing business. The draft also diminishes the body of laws that protect the environment at a high time when the nation needs to be enhancing and tightening the ordinances and regulations. 

The draft would be enriching the businesses and industrial corridors by depriving the democracy, restricting and limiting public opinion and participation, and would be bestowing environmental clearances for the projects of the environmental offenders. 

By pressing that the voices of young people and the aspirations of the future generations must be taken into account while shaping today's policies and legislation, the youth groups requested the Union Minister to scrap the draft EIA 2020 and to commit to the well-being of young people and future generations and to implement the enhanced participatory exercise to strengthen the environmental laws. They further highlighted that the COVID-19 outbreak has clearly shown that nature has the power to halt the economies of the major industrialized nations. 

The reports stated that the campaign has been organized by the Chennai Climate Action Group. The youth groups belong to political, environmental, and social organizations. The students from Dr.Ambedkar Law University, Madras Medical College, SRM School of Architecture and Interior Design, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Madras School of Social Work, and the Ambedkar Periyar Circle in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras are among the 75 groups that addressed its demand to the center. 

The groups have pointed out five major issues and impairments in the draft EIA 2020 under the areas of the requirement of prior Environment clearance and permission, preparation of the Environment Impact Assessment Report, Post Facto Approvals, Public Consultation, and Environment and economic development. Earlier, the group of 110 activists, environmentalists, and experts from Tamil Nadu had written to Union Minister Prakash Javadekar and said that the EIA 2020 draft legitimizes the damage for nature and undermines democracy. 

The draft EIA 2020, which has become one of the controversial drafts proposed by the Modi-led government, had drawn major flak across the nation for its anti-nature and environment recommendations. The Central government has fixed August 11 as the deadline for receiving feedback from the public about the draft.