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Ex-TN CS clears legal hurdles to her appointment on NGT

By Rakesh Ranjan & MK Shukla- 19 Apr 2021
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New Delhi (19.04.2021): Former TN CS Girija Vaidyanathan (Retd IAS:1981:TN) has cleared the legal hurdles to qualify for the position of expert member of the Southern Regional bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). She was CS between December 2016 and June 2019.

Indianmandarins had earlier reported that her appointment to the post was stayed because of a PIL petition filed by an NGO questioning her qualification in terms of experience in handling environmental issues.

On April 9, the TN HC stayed her appointment stating she prima facie didn’t meet the eligibility requirement. The court then also questioned the need to appoint bureaucrats without field experience to tribunals.

However, on examination of records, the first bench of chief justice Sanjib Banerjee and justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy discovered that she did possess the necessary qualifications to be appointed as an expert member of the NGT’s southern bench. So they vacated the stay.

Vaidyanathan’s counsel brought to the Court's notice the facts about her 2.5 years tenures as the environment secretary and the chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board besides her stint of 2.5 years as the health secretary - the position that made her responsible for the management of biomedical waste which is an environmental matter.

So her counsel argued that Ms. Vaidyanathan thus fulfilled the minimum 5-years experience in handling environmental issues and was, therefore, qualified to hold the NGT expert member post

Finally, on the basis of arguments from both sides, the bench ruled that the former TN CS had indeed “dealt with environmental matters” as per clause (b) of the NGT Act, 2010.

(By Rakesh Ranjan & MK Shukla)

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