The Supreme Court’s deep dive into the data base of illegally occupied government bungalows in Delhi has left some senior babus, and even journalists, splashing around in water.

Now running around property brokers, these defiant souls have only till December 5 to vacate their official housing.

A public advertisement of this long list was placed in The Times of India last Tuesday. While the names of former home minister Buta Singh and Comptroller and Auditor-General honcho Rekha Gupta got reported in some sections of the media, the names of media persons on the SC’s ‘hit list’ hasn’t been highlighted.

So, purely for the record, if merely to restore a sense of equity with harried politicians, civil servants and the odd general, here’s the list of interlopers from the fourth estate: PD Ramakrishnan, Usha Srivastava, Sanjay K Mishra, Kamal Sekhri, Ravi Kumar Garikipati, M Siraj Sahil, Nusrat Zahir Ahmed, Ajay Setia, SC Joshi, Jagdish Nandan, Singh, RC Pandit, DK Joshi, Subhash Chander, and Virendra Prabhakar.

While some of these hacks have overstayed their welcome in housing meant for directors and joint secretaries, some have been rubbing shoulder with even more senior officers.

Of course, these honourable folks must have comparable neighbours. How about YS Dadhwal, a former police commissioner of Delhi, A Didar Singh, now secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Jawahar Sircar, former secretary in the government of India, Shipra Biswas, once a director-general of information in every commerce minister’s team, Baljit Singh, an additional director-general of Border Security Force, and AJ Arnold, a member of the Telecom Commission!

It is instructive to note how the directorate of estates seems to have finally trumped these heavy hitters.

And credit for it must go to the much-beleaguered National Green Tribunal (NGT). While these folks have been mandated to unburden the courts on a variety of environment and forestry cases for several years now, the executive has been only too happy to prick their balloon.

Sometimes relevant judicial and expert members haven’t shortlisted. And if shortlisted, environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan hasn’t liked what she saw, so she’s even changed the selection criteria for retiring bureaucrats. For a courtroom, these folks have had to slug it out with Justice Markandey Katju’s Press Council of India on who would get Faridkot House. And in the instant case, with housing not being made available to those who have been brave enough to sign up as tribunal members, the NGT felt it had had enough!

So before they could dislodge India’s entrenched green violators, the tribunal decided to take its own accommodation problems before the apex court.

And it worked!

Out of sheer disgust, not to mention quiet relief for the government’s directorate of estates which otherwise wouldn’t have had the courage to dislodge the overstaying occupants, the apex court has given December 5 as the last date for peaceful vacation of all housing where lease is over, or the officer has retired and the grace period expired (For more, please read http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/cjinotice19092012.pdf).

The result, of course, has its share of ironies. Among those set to be evicted thanks to the green tribunal is a babu mandated to protect the environment: IH Khan, an additional principal chief conservator of forests of Delhi!