Chandigarh, Aug. 26 -- The Haryana assembly on Monday passed Haryana Management of Civic Amenities and Infrastructure Deficient Areas outside Municipal Area (Special provision) amendment Bill 2025 for regularisation of unauthorised industrial establishments in the state. Speaking on the Bill, Congress MLA from Kaithal, Aditya Surjewala, said the government wants to use a residential Act for industrial use. "In the original Bill, the government had excluded the industrial areas because industries have to be regulated separately as compared to residential colonies. However, this Bill removes this exclusion and Section 6A is being introduced,'' the Congress MLA said. Surjewala said that the definition of enterprise as per the amendment Bill included manufacturing and processing, which meant that a chemical plant or a heavy industry can be regularised. "There are no environment safeguards in the Bill and it does not provide for environment impact assessment to assess the air pollution, water contamination and hazardous waste originating from the industrial units. Just by doing self-certification on a web portal, an applicant can tear apart the environmental laws with full immunity from the government,'' the Congress MLA said. He argued that the amendment Bill was discriminatory as those entrepreneurs who went by the book and followed proper procedure - purchased an industrial plot, took all the relevant approvals for setting up an industrial unit, paid fees etc, would feel frustrated. "But those who flouted rules and ran illegal industrial units will get amnesty. This sends a wrong message to the business community - that operates an industrial unit illegally and then applies for regularization. The moment one presses the submit button on the web portal all the punitive actions will be suspended. A legislation which was enacted for residential areas cannot be used for legitimising industrial lawlessness.,'' Surjewala said. He demanded that regulatory safeguard in the Bill should be incorporated and it should be sent to a select committee of the assembly. Congress MLA from Jhajjar, Geeta Bhukkal, said that it would have been better if the government had stopped the mushrooming of unauthorised industrial colonies at first. "How far these industrial units should be away from the municipal areas and what kind of industries would be regularised,'' Bhukkal asked. Urban local bodies minister, Vipul Goel, however, said that the criticism of the amendment Bill by the Congress MLAs was unwarranted as the government was only regularising those units which were unauthorisedly allowed during the Congress rule. "These are the seeds sown by you which we are trying to regularise. They played with the lives of lakhs of people. They were the ones who had allowed these units to come up. We are only trying to regularise them,'' Goel said. The minister also clarified that the government was only inviting applications initially. "A scrutiny will be done with regards to various aspects. The pollution norms will not be overlooked,'' the minister assured the House. The Congress benches protested over Goel's remarks with Bhukkal stating that it is the BJP which has been in power in the state for 10 years "So who has sown these seeds,'' Bhukkal said. Goel then said that everyone has a right to express his views but no one can intimidate him. The amendment Bill says that in case of regularisation of unauthorised industrial establishment, an online portal for receiving applications from entrepreneur or enterprise shall be created and all punitive action initiated against the applicants shall be deemed to have been suspended from the date of submission of the application on the portal until the government takes a final decision, except in cases forwarded to or pending before any court of law....