Environmentalists have noted that the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has reconstituted the Central Pollution Control Boardas per a March 23 notification this year disregarding the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests, and the High Powered Committee of the Supreme Court.
“The Parliamentary Committee had observed that the composition of the CPCB is dominated by government representatives and constituted by the Central Government. In such a situation, the CPCB cannot be expected to act as a watchdog of environmental protection,” said Gopal Krishna, ToxicsWatch Alliance, an NGO working in the area of environment protection.
He said that the Parliamentary Standing Committee had expressed its “displeasure over the fact that no qualifications or criteria have been fixed for members of such an important technical and scientific body”.
“Dr. V. Maitreyan, who headed Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests, examined the functioning of the CPCB in its report presented to the Rajya Sabha on September 22, 2008, and Lok Sabha on October 21, 2008. The committee did not record that key posts in the CPCB are being manned by bureaucrats who neither possess the necessary capabilities and expertise in properly managing and planning pollution control activities nor have enough time to pay attention to these activities for obvious reasons,’’ noted a release issued by the ToxicsWatch Alliance.
