Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation may plead innocence to the charges of damaging the Yamuna floodplains, but the National Green Tribunal’s Principle Committee isn’t buying it.
The Committee, headed by Shashi Shekhar, Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, told the green court that the Foundation’s World Culture Festival “has completely destroyed, not simply damaged” the floodplains.
However, in its 47-page report made public on Wednesday, the Committee, did not give an estimation of the cost of restoration which, it said, could take a decade or more. The seven-member Committee, which includes IIT-Delhi Professor AK Gosain, Prof CR Babu and others, prepared the report following field visits and on the basis of satellite images.
It said that some Committee members had visited the site in October, 2015, before the Festival, for preparing reports for the Tribunal on restoration of floodplains. The report notes that following the Festival there has been a complete loss of natural wetlands, vegetation (including trees and shrubs) and aquatic vegetation.
As part of the three-day Festival, between March 11 and 13, the Foundation put up a seven-acre stage, besides clearing and levelling 1,000 acres for attendees, blocked a side-channel of the river, and constructed ramps, access roads and pontoon bridges for which army personnel were also deployed.
The report observed that the floodplains were levelled, the ground compacted and hardened, and natural vegetation cut. Further, “huge amounts of earth and debris have been dumped to construct ramps for access…to construct roads, which have consolidated and compacted the soil, possibly to significant depths required to bear weight of heavy vehicles.”
These activities, the report stresses, have “a direct bearing on the diversity of habitats.”
Committee member CR Babu told BusinessLine that the Festival “caused damage on many levels. First is the physical damage of levelling of land, cutting down of trees and shrubs. Second, it has damaged the chemistry of the floodplains due to the damage to the micro-organisms that are important for decomposition process. And all this leads to the biological damage in terms of the ecological process. The compacted land has also resulted in lower capacity for recharging of groundwater.”
Babu also challenged the claims of the Foundation that no damage was caused to the floodplains.
Biased report: FoundationIn a statement o Wednesday, the Foundation said the Committee “is biased and unscientific, lacks credibility.” The statement said some members have ties with the petitioner of the case and “the report shows no application of mind.”
“It is clear that the intent of the committee is to merely malign the name of Art of Living,” the statement said, adding that the evidence given by the panel “amounts to nothing less than a scientific fraud.”
The Foundation has been canvassing for reconstituting the committee