The proposed draft violates several provisions of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and other laws which protect the rights of the local communities.

The draft also restricts the functioning of the environmental experts and scientists in the environment clearance processes.

Draft EIA 2020 has a problem with definitions. It provides narrow definitions of eco-sensitive areas and also leaves out numerous protected areas from its definition—such as reserve forests, village forests, wetlands, coasts, etcetera.

Draft EIA 2020 allows post-facto approval. Without prior environmental clearance, various projects like dump mining of major minerals including coal, acids manufacturing, all projects of airports and heliports, inland waterways, highways, expressways, multimodal corridors, ring roads, elevated roads will get approval. These projects shall not be required to be placed before the Appraisal Committee, hence these projects have been exempted from undergoing EIA processes.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India has disapproved the concept of post-facto environmental clearances to industrial projects that are initiated without a clearance.

According to the draft, all projects concerning national defence and security or involving other strategic considerations, as determined by the Central Government, no information relating to such projects shall be placed in public domain. But there is no definition of the "strategic" provided in Draft EIA 2020. It may be defined according to the ease of industries, businesses, corporates, capitalism, rather than the rights of common people.

There is also less possibility of a public hearing. If applicable, the public hearing period has been shrunk. According to the draft, a minimum notice period of twenty days shall be provided to the public for furnishing their responses. 20 days is too short a time to respond for local affected people and others who have a stake in the environmental impact of the project(s).