NGT western zone bench to resume hearing cases after 3 years

PUNE The Western Zone bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), will see the light of day three years after it was shut due to an absence of appointments at key posts that was pointed out by the bar association of western zone

PUNE The Western Zone bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), will see the light of day three years after it was shut due to an absence of appointments at key posts that was pointed out by the bar association of western zone.

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The NGT has four zonal benches and one principal bench - principal bench in Delhi, southern zone in Chennai, central zone in Bhopal, western zone in Pune and eastern zone in Kolkata - each requires at least one judicial member and one expert member to function.

A look at the pendency statistics shows the reflection of the western zone bench being out of action - it has the highest pendency of the five benches: even more than the principal bench in Delhi. The principal bench has 561 cases pending, while western zone has 641, the southern bench has 526, followed by eastern zone with 387 and central zone with 207 as on June 30, 2021.

However, the principal bench of the tribunal has also managed to dispose of some cases from the western zone jurisdiction.

Between July 2020 and June 2021, the 404 cases were disposed of by the tribunal from the western zone jurisdiction. Of the 404 cases, July 2020 and September 2020 saw highest number of disposals - 60 and 72 respectively - while disposing 44 cases in May 2020 and 64 cases in June 2020.

In 2017, the expert member at Pune-based western zone bench retired. For a few months, the bench operated without an expert member.

This discrepancy was pointed out by the NGT Western Zone Bar Association which approached the Supreme Court. A reference was made to a 2017 circular by the Ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEF), that stated that the NGT bench cannot function without both members present.

On January 31, 2018, while hearing the submission made by the NGT Bar Association (western zone), the Supreme Court said that no single-member bench will be constituted in compliance with the 2017 circular of central ministry. The very next day, the western zone stopped hearing cases. A few months later the Principal Bench started hearing important cases through video conference. However, the zonal bench in Pune had remained shut.

Now, Justice M Sathyanarayanan will take over as judicial member and Dr Arun Kumar Verma as the expert member. So far, the principal bench with one chairperson, multiple judicial and expert members were hearing urgent cases through video conferencing.

Even on Monday, the hearings will commence through video conferencing. However, the pending cases were piling up as only urgent cases were being taken up by the principal bench