The southern bench of the National Green Tribunal has become non-functional following the retirement of the lone judicial member M.S. Nambiar on Tuesday.
Over the last two months, Justice P. Jyothimani, the other judicial member, and P.S. Rao, the expert member, have also retired. With Mr. Nambiar’s retirement, thousands of cases are pending before the bench now.
The process of appointing judicial members and expert members to the NGT is stuck in the Supreme Court after Congress MP Jairam Ramesh filed a petition challenging changes made under the Finance Act. Lawyers and applicants are now in a fix over the next course of action regarding their applications. Two lawyers who spoke to The Hindu said one remedy available to them is to move the Madras High Court. “Many of my clients cannot afford to move their cases to the Principal Bench in Delhi. It will be too expensive,” one of the lawyers said.
‘Back to square one’
Both the lawyers agreed that the situation has now gone back to square one, defeating the purpose of setting up the NGT.
Nithyanand Jayaraman, who has a number of important cases pending before the bench, including the ones on the Ennore ash dumping and Kosasthalaiyar encroachment, is upset over the development.
“The tribunal has now been killed by the government. The government is also using the police to prevent us from protesting. This is a pressure cooker that will explode,” he said.
Mr. Jayaraman said that the original recourse of cases being heard at the High Courts could have been continued by improving infrastructure; but instead, the NGT was set up to hear environmental cases.
“Now, the appellate forum has also been taken away from us. Bad things will happen a lot more in terms of environmental cases,” he said. Now, even the High Court is short-staffed, he added. Antony Rubin, an applicant who has filed a case against IIT-Madras over the death of black bucks and dumping of waste in the campus, said it would be difficult to go to Delhi.
“It is really upsetting. In fact, we wanted to file a miscellaneous application in the IIT case. We are unable to do it now. Also, most of my cases are pro-bono and my lawyers who come to Chennai to argue also do it pro-bono. It will be very expensive to go to Delhi every time,” he said.
An official at the NGT said the current situation was unfortunate. “Most of the people who file cases here cannot afford to go to Delhi. For them to come to Chennai to file cases and appear during hearings itself is a difficult task since it involves spending money on travel, stay and lawyer expenses,” he added.
