Environment Ministry Appoints Retired Odisha IFoS Officer Siddhanta Das As CEC Chairman

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Real Estate Regulatory Authority (ORERA) chairman Siddhanta Das has been appointed as the new chairman of Central Empowered Committee (CEC).

He is the first person to hold the top post in the permanent CEC, a central body set up to to flag cases of official non-compliance with orders of Supreme Court related to conservation. It earlier functioned on ad-hoc basis and worked as the watchdog for issues of environmental clearances and compliances.

Banumathi G, AIGF, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has been made member secretary of the apex committee with DG forests Chadra Prakash Goyal, Sunil Limaye and JR Bhatt as its members.

Set up in 2002, and reconstituted in 2008, the CEC has, in the words of the court, “rendered yeoman services to the cause of environment.” The committee was earlier under the Supreme Court. In September, it authorised the Environment Ministry to nominate its members and have the final say on the merit of its recommendations.

The committee now reports to the ministry.

A retired Indian Forest Service Officer of 1982-bath of Odisha cadre, Das was appointed ORERA chairman in July 2020. A expert member of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and former Director General (Forests), he has served as secretary of Odisha State Pollution Control Board (OSPCB) for four years. He has also worked as the project director of a Food Security programme for selected tribal populace taken up under the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations.

Das was the first and the only full-time officer to join Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), when it was constituted after the worst ever Super-cyclone in history that devastated coastal Odisha in October 1999. He drafted the 1st State DM Policy and State DM Plan of the country.

Post retirement, he joined the National Green Tribunal as an Expert Member from January-July 2020.