JUDGMENT :

G.S. Patel, J.

1. Rule. By consent, Rule is made returnable forthwith.

2. The matter was first listed before a Division Bench (Chief Justice and MS Sonak J) at the seat of the Bombay High Court at Porvorim, Goa on 5th August 2022. After outlining the issue, the Bench was of the view that the matter could be more advantageously be heard by a Full Bench of three Judges. Hence the present Full Bench, which took up the matter at the principal seat since all three of us were presently in Mumbai.

3. This Public Interest Writ Petition is filed by the Goa Foundation, an environment NGO based in Goa, and represented by Ms Alvares. Over several decades, the Goa Foundation has approached this court and the Supreme Court in the public interest, litigating questions regarding environmental protection in various forms. The members of the Petitioner are all Indian citizens. We are satisfied with the bona fides of the Petitioner, and, indeed, these are not questioned in the Writ Petition.

4. The Petition assails administrative notices dated 6th September 2021 (page 130), 4th January 2022 (page 132), 11th April 2022 (page 133A) and 27th April 2022 (page 133B) and 26th August 2022 (page 227 of the Petitioners’ Affidavit dated 8th September 222).[There is some duplication in the Affidavits in Reply on behalf of the 1st and 2nd Respondents and the further Affidavit filed by the Goa Foundation. Our references in this judgment are to the Affidavits and their page numbers, both.] The last of this was noticed after Affidavits came in. We grant leave to amend to include a challenge to the 26th August 2022 notice, without need of reverification. The amendment is to be effected in two weeks from the date this judgment is pronounced. We allow the additional challenge because the fifth notice is of a class with the other four notices.

5. Briefly stated, Ms Alvares’s case is that these five notices taken together have resulted in cases from Goa that were being heard by the Western Zonal Bench of the National Green Tribunal (“NGT”) at Pune being abruptly taken up, for no good reason and without clarity as to which case would be taken and when, by a so-called “Special Bench” sitting in New Delhi, and comprising members of the Northern Bench joined on VC by members of the Western Zonal Bench. There is no power, she submits, for the Chairperson of the NGT to issue such directions or orders. There is no superior or governing seat or bench. Nothing in the National Green Tribunal (Practice and Procedure) Rules 2011 (“the Procedure Rules”) or in the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 (“the NGT Act”) permits this. Every one of these notices is explicitly said on its face to be a ‘notice’, not an order. Each is said to have been issued by a “Competent Authority”, without identifying that authority; and neither the NGT Act nor the Procedure Rules speak of any such ‘Competent Authority’.

6. That these are administrative directions or notices is accepted in the Affidavit in Reply filed on behalf of the NGT (the 1st and 2nd Respondents collectively), which describes them as “office orders/notices”. In other words, all five notices are issued without underlying any petition, application, or judicial proceeding.

7. We note this at the forefront because Mr Joshi, learned Advocate for the NGT raises a preliminary objection as to maintainability. He relies a decision of the Supreme Court in Union of India v Alapan Bandyopadhyay, (2022) 3 SCC 133. Mr Joshi’s submission is that since the impugned notices emanated from the Northern Zonal Bench, claimed to be “the Principal Bench” of the NGT, therefore, this Court does not have the territorial jurisdiction to entertain the Petition. His submission is that Bandyopadhyay’s ratio is that it is only the High Court which has territorial jurisdiction over the notice issuing bench that can entertain a petition such as this one. I