The Supreme Court criticized the Delhi Government on Wednesday for "taking the shortcut" of hiring contractual employees instead of making permanent appointments to the state pollution control board.

“Instead of making an effort to regularly appoint the staff members, the government seems to have adopted a shortcut method of appointing contractual employees. This practice needs to be deprecated”, the bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Augustine George Masih observed in its order.

The court also instructed the Chief Secretaries of Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh to submit affidavits within three weeks, detailing a time-bound schedule for filling all vacancies in their respective state Pollution Control Boards. The court scheduled the next hearing for August 28, 2024.

Justice Oka questioned how the Delhi Pollution Control Board is functioning with 233 vacancies out of 344 sanctioned posts.

“This is how your Environment Department functions. We have noticed that your Environment Department granted permission for felling of trees, usurping the powers of the tree authority. This is how you function. This is by Secretary of the Environment Department. So if the persons who are Manning Environment Department have no sensitivity about environment, what is going to happen you tell us”, he remarked.

The counsel for Delhi submitted that 81 contractual engineers have been hired and explained that some posts are promotional and can only be filled when employees become eligible. However, the court dismissed this as an excuse, noting that only 65 posts, or one-fourth of the vacancies, are promotional posts.

The court further remarked on the “sorry state of affairs” of the large number of vacancies in the state PCBs, including the capital of the country. “As far as Delhi is concerned, the situation is worst. Out of 344 sanctioned posts, as many as 233 posts are vacant. This is a sad state of affairs and in the capital city also the state pollution control board is hardly functional, as it is functioning with strength of only one-third”, the court stated in its order.

The court observed that over one-third of the posts are vacant in the Rajasthan Pollution Control Board, with 395 vacancies out of 808 sanctioned posts. According to an affidavit filed by the state following a court order, the recruitment process has only begun for 56 posts. Amicus curiae Aparajita Singh highlighted that no orders from the Pollution Control Board are being implemented due to these vacancies. Justice Oka concurred, noting that the authorities, which hold critical responsibilities under the Air Act, Water Act, and other regulations, have become toothless.

The court noted from an affidavit submitted by the state that 314 out of 652 posts in the Punjab Pollution Control Board are vacant. It also highlighted that the recruitment process has not even started for 100 posts. Regarding Haryana, the court remarked that the situation is no better than in other states, with 202 out of 482 sanctioned posts vacant, as informed by the counsel for Haryana. In Uttar Pradesh, the counsel for the state reported that 145 out of 732 sanctioned posts are vacant.

Case no. – WP (C) No. 13029/1985

Case Title – MC Mehta v. Union of India and Ors., In Re: Number of Vacant Posts in Statutory Pollution Control Boards of Various States