The post of the Cent-ral Pollution Control Board (CPCB) chief has been lying vacant for nearly four-and-a-half years, despite growing anxiety over increasing pollution levels across the country and th
The post of the Cent-ral Pollution Control Board (CPCB) chief has been lying vacant for nearly four-and-a-half years, despite growing anxiety over increasing pollution levels across the country and the Centre’s repeated claims to arrest it.
Tasked with the key role of prevention, control and abatement of water and air pollution, the CPCB, pres-ently being led as an additional charge by a joint secretary-level officer A.K. Mehta, is at the helm of several crucial projects such as “Clean Ganga”, one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s favourites. It is in charge of the installation work of real-time (online) monitoring systems for effluent discharge from highly polluting industries into the Ganga, a project soliciting effective expertise and autonomy.
Environmentalists have been pointing out that the delay in the appointment of a CPCB chief has been hampering several projects, “The government, time and again, comes up with excuses like additional charge given and duties being handled by others, but this is not the solution. After all, the CPCB is a statutory body and playing around with it is clearly an issue,” says Sanjay Upadh-yaya, a lawyer dealing with environment issues. “There are clear guidelines for appointing the CPCB chief, so that there are no administrative hiccups involved.
But in spite of this, such delay in appointing the chairman of such an important pollution body clearly shows the government’s lethargy in tackling one of the most challenging issues at hand, one with global repercussions. The absence of somebody at the top is beginning to show.
The position, which demands over 15 years’ experience in environment protection work, has been lying vacant since February 2012 when CPCB chief S.P. Gautam demitted office. So far, since 2012, appointment to the CPCB chairman’s post has been scrapped thrice —2013, 2014 and 2015 — by the appointments committee of the Union Cabinet on the grounds that no one met the desired qualifications.
The last time this happened was in July 2015 when the committee rejected all 17 candidates short-listed by the environment ministry. The list included names of scientists as well as civil servants from the Indian Forest Service (IFS), the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Services (IPS). Some of the names were Sunil Pandey, forest secretary in the Uttar Pradesh government; Sanjiv Kumar, environment secretary with the Delhi government; IPS officers Mudit Kumar Singh and Bipin Bihari; and J.S. Pandey, a scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). At least one of them had applied in 2014 too, but his name was rejected again on grounds that he lacked experience and expertise to handle the post. Ministry sources termed such claims “absurd” as the candidate was “quite suitable for the job.” Sources in the environment ministry add that the process for a fourth attempt to select the chief of the apex body has started though there was no confirmation whether a fresh advertisement had been released or not. The government wants candidates applying for the post to have a postgraduate degree in science, special knowledge of the subject and at least 15 years’ practical experience in environmental protection. The tenure of the selected candidate will be three years.
