Politicians and bureaucrats will no longer find it easy to treat pollution control boards as their fiefdoms.

A directive issued by a Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee, and ratified by the Union ministry of environment and forests, has barred ministers and officials from heading the state green boards without adequate expertise.

The committee has taken ?strong exception? to the manner in which the top posts in various state boards, including in West Bengal, are being filled up.

In a recent letter to the chief secretaries of all states, a copy of which is with Metro, the panel has complained that ?in several cases, chief secretaries, environment secretaries, politicians, MLAs and other non-technical persons have been appointed chairpersons of the boards or the pollution control committees of Union Territories?.

The letter was issued by M. Subba Rao, member-secretary of the committee, and also additional director in the Union environment ministry. ?Most boards are yet to reply. I have sent reminders,? said Rao.

The letter mentions that in several states ?officials are either being appointed or deputed to the post of member-secretaries without the necessary qualifications?.

Listing the norms, the committee has asserted that the chairperson should be a full-time employee and must have ?special knowledge or experience in respect to matters relating to environment protection or must be a person with knowledge and experience of administering institutions dealing with the matters?.

As for the post of the member-secretary, also a full-time job, ?the incumbent should be a postgraduate in science, engineering or technology and have adequate experience of working in the area of environment protection?.

Green activist Subhas Dutta, who hailed this effort of making state boards independent, has repeatedly alleged that the member-secretary of the West Bengal Pollution Control Board, Shyamal Sarkar, is not working truly full-time, being involved in projects sponsored by international agencies.

Interestingly, though Sarkar has left the board last week, the government is yet to find a replacement having the required credentials.