National Green Tribunal gets second bench in South

Chennai: The second bench at the southern bench of National Green Tribunal (NGT) had commenced its sitting on Friday – after over seven months - giving hopes on quicker disposal of the 1,500 odd environment-related cases.

Justice M. Sasidharan Nambiar, who retired from the High court of Kerala and served at the Tribunal’s Principal bench, New Delhi, is now posted as a judicial member for court –2 in Chennai. It could be noted that only one bench has been running with only one bench comprising judicial member P. Jyothimani and expert member P.S. Rao after the retirement of Justice M Chockalingam.

The Southern bench, which deals with cases from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Union Territories of Puducherry and Lakshadweep, was overburdened resulting in huge delays in the cases. However, advocates say that many factors including non- appearance of parties before the tribunal, procrastination in sensitive cases and importance given to cases of national interest were causes of the delay.

There is also a delay on the part of other government departments. The Loss of Ecology Authority (LoEA) - the body that looks into the ecological related issues in Tamil Nadu - was scrapped by the Madras High Court four months ago, transferring 97,000 cases to Southern bench of NGT.

“Considering the vast number of pending cases, the court has ordered for the commencement of a separate court to deal with ecological issues. However, the central government has not notified it yet,” said an advocate.

Delays in the appointment of Judges are another setback, according to legal experts. “The appointment of the judges remains pending in the government, even though the Supreme Court selection committee has already selected them six months back,” the advocate added. This could also lead to delays in appointment of judges in various courts next year.

The southern bench is now being functioned with only one expert member P.S. Rao as R Nagendran who resigned long back is yet to be replaced.

Justice Sasidharan Nambiar, who served as Registrar, High Court of Kerala from 2002 was appointed as additional Judge, High Court of Kerala in 2004.  He was sworn in as Permanent Judge of the High Court of Kerala with effect from 2005. He joined National Green Tribunal as Judicial Member in 2013.