Sri Sri served with 2 contempt notices, Green Court pulls up panel for delay

Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was on Tuesday served two contempt notices for violating the orders of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) with regard to the World Cultural Festival he organised on the banks of the Yamuna in March.

The court has accepted the pleas of main petitioner, Manoj Misra, and another environmentalist Anand Arya, to club the contempt cases to a single case that will come up for hearing on May 25, an NGT official said. In a related development, the Principal Bench of NGT headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar has pulled up the Principal Committee appointed by it to assess the damage caused to the fragile Yamuna floodplains because of the World Culture Festival (WCF) for not submitting its report even after the deadline for it has expired long go. The WCF was held on March 11-13, attended by lakhs of people. 

“Everything that comes to you has got stuck. Why have you not prepared the report,” Justice Kumar asked the committee during the proceedings of the case.  

The NGT had on March 9 constituted a ‘Principal Committee’ comprising officials from the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, National Pollution Control Board, ministry of environment and forest conservation, and the union water resource ministry to assess the damage caused to the Yamuna floodplains.

In a case filed on Tuesday, Anand Arya accused Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of “wilfully disregarding and violating the NGT order passed on March 9 this year by releasing enzymes into the River Yamuna”.