The State government on Tuesday told the Madras High Court that Principal Chief Conservator of Forests-cum-Chief Wildlife Warden Shekhar Kumar Niraj had sought a transfer on his own. The government accepted the request and all formalities were over except for issuance of the transfer order.
Appearing before Justices V. Bharathidasan and N. Sathish Kumar, Additional Advocate General J. Ravindran said, the transfer order was about to be passed on March 11 when the court was informed by a lawyer about the proposed transfer and it wanted to know whether the information was true.
“Since this court was seized of the issue, we have not passed the transfer order so far,” the AAG told the Bench and sought permission to issue the order on an assurance that the officer would continue to assist the court in pending cases related to forest offences and protection of environment.
However, the judges asked the AAG to hold back the transfer order till March 17 when they were slated to hear an important case related to constitution of a Special Investigation Team comprising officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation and police officials from Tamil Nadu and Kerala to probe wildlife offences.
The judges said that they would require the assistance of the officer in identifying the cases that had to be transferred to the SIT. Making it clear that they would not interfere with the prerogative of the State government to transfer its officials, the judges said, this particular officer had been of great assistance to them.
