National Green Tribunal angry as MoEF remains unrepresented

Ministry counsel resign owing to fee cut indicating growing differences between the tribunal and the bureaucrats. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 17, 2013, 17:20:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

A tiff is brewing between the environment ministry and the National Green Tribunal with the ministry remaining unrepresented in the tribunal since November 4 owing to resignation of its law officers.

The ministry officials say the law officers have resigned owing to low re-imbursements being offered by the Law ministry but others suspect that it was because of brewing trouble between the ministry and the tribunal.

A lawyer said the ministry’s counsels were upset with the way the ministry was dealing with the cases listed with the tribunal. “The briefing was being done at the last moment resulting in the ministry’s view not being represented adequately. Later we were being blamed for an adverse order,” a law officer said.

The ministry has taken objection to the tribunal pulling it up on several occasions for faulty environment clearances and taking up issues on suo-motto basis. The ministry had expressed its unhappiness over the tribunal functioning in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, which was later withdrawn.

On Monday, a bench headed by tribunal chairperson Swantanter Kumar expressed his displeasure over absence of ministry’s lawyer in a case related to steel major Posco resulting in delay in proceedings. “We deprecate this attitude. You seem to be offended with tribunals, you better be careful about tribunals,” the bench said, while summoning the joint secretary of the ministry.

Ruling out a tiff with the tribunal, an environment ministry official instead blamed the law ministry for its absence from the tribunal. The law officers have refused to appear for the ministry as their fees has been reduced on the ground of fund crunch, an official said.

The official also indicated at lack of coordination between the two ministries causing the ministry remaining unrepresented at various courts. The southern bench of the tribunal recently threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against the ministry for failing to reply to its notice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk LIVE and more across India.