CHENNAI: Finally, there is a ray of hope for a revival of the southern bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in Chennai as the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved the appointment of Justice K Ramakrishnan, a former judge of Kerala High Court, as the judicial member.
Reliable sources told Express that Justice Ramakrishnan will be serving at the principal bench of NGT in New Delhi for a couple of months before being posted as a judicial member in Chennai.
Justice Ramakrishnan completed his law course from Government Law College, Calicut. He was sworn-in as Additional Judge of Kerala High Court in January, 2013 and served as a judge till October last year.
Meanwhile, Union Environment Ministry has invited applications for filling up the posts of expert members in NGT. The tribunal has five places of sitting at New Delhi, Bhopal, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune.
The southern bench of NGT had moved into the historic Kalas Mahal a year ago and was one of the busiest zones receiving the highest number of cases only after the principal bench. However, it became defunct after the retirement of the lone judicial member MS Nambiar on January 4 this year. Union government made no efforts to revive it until the Supreme Court came down heavily on it. For the last one month, NGT Chairman Adarsh Kumar Goel made a stop-gap arrangement of hearing pending cases through video-conferencing twice a week.