Empty Bench in green court

A tribunal, established to protect the environment, is itself struggling to stay relevant. All four member posts of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), Southern Zone, Chennai, is vacant and only five members of the sanctioned strength of 20 of all the NGT Benches across India will remain in service after February 12, said the National Environment and Wildlife Lovers’ Federation, Mangaluru. The federation’s legal adviser, Ranjan Shetty, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22, sought his intervention in the matter. Though the Centre informed the Delhi High Court in September 2017 that it had initiated the process of selecting members, things don’t appear to have moved forward, the federation said in the letter. A Bench of the tribunal should comprise two members — judicial and expert — as per the NGT Act, 2010. With the number of cases increasing before the Southern Zone of the tribunal, the government had sanctioned one more Bench. During 2017, only one expert member (P.S. Rao) sat, alternating with two judicial members — P. Jyothimani and M.S. Nambiar. Mr. Jyothimani retired in October 2017, and Mr. Rao after that, leaving the lone judicial member, Mr. Nambiar, who retired on January 3, 2018. Thus, there has been a vacuum at the NGT, Southern Zone, the federation said. While the NGT’s functioning has come to a grinding halt, more than 500 applications are pending before the Southern Zone tribunal, the federation said. Since January 3, cases are being given next dates at the Chennai NGT, Mr. Shetty told The Hindu. For example, cases of January 24 an 25 now stand posted to March 5 because there are no members at all, he said, and added that over 500 cases were pending before the Chennai NGT. Source: The Hindu