Loss of Ecology Authority abolished

A division bench comprising Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice N Kirubakaran on dismissing the plea moved by the Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum said, “We are of t h e considered view that after the constitution of the National Green Tribunal, there is no point in keeping the said writ petition pending before this court. Therefore, we direct the plea to be transferred to the file of the NGT and abolish LoEA.” 

The LoEA had come into being by an order of the Supreme Court on August 28, 1996, based on a plea by Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum, seeking appropriate relief for the prevention, control and abolition of pollution caused in the Palar river bed by industries.

But since there was no clarity as to whether the functions of the LoEA have also been taken over by NGT, the LoEA functioned with numerous hiccups with it being offered extensions on and off.  Also, when a plea challenging the award by LoEA came up before the first bench in 2014, it was pointed out that the authority had become dysfunctional due to the unwillingness of its only long-time chairman to continue and there were about 28,000 claim petitions pending on its file. 

This prompted the first bench to direct the Centre to nominate a chairman within a month and also provide it necessary facilities to make it functional. 

But the Centre moved a miscellaneous petition seeking a modification of the order. It contended that there is neither a necessity, nor is it feasible to continue the LoEA after creating NGT. 

Finding reason in the Central Government’s plea, the division bench in its order directed the transfer of all claims pending on the file of LoEA to NGT’s Chennai Bench. 

The bench on citing the huge volume of claims now getting transferred to the NGT directed the Central Government to constitute, at least one additional Bench at Chennai, within six months, so that the tribunal does not get crushed  under the weight of such a huge volume. 

The judges also urged the Centre to consider absorbing LoEA employees into NGT.