Yamuna floodplain was in a "sordid" condition prior to the holding of the three-day World Culture Festival, the Art of Living (AoL) foundation of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar today told the National Green Tribunal.
Yamuna floodplain was in a "sordid" condition prior to the holding of the three-day World Culture Festival, the Art of Living (AoL) foundation of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar today told the National Green Tribunal.
Referring to a report of the Principal Committee, dated April 19, 2014, AoL told the green panel that cultural and religious activities were permitted at the site and there was no bar on holding of the extravaganza.
The NGT set up the Principal Committee to see execution of Yamuna cleaning.
"It is submitted that the event site was in a sordid state, to say the least. Even with regard to the state of the floodplains in so far as debris dumping was concerned, the situation was admittedly no better," advocate Nikhil Sakhardande, appearing for AoL, said.
The AoL told a bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar that it was a "pre-requisite" for the seven- member expert panel to know about the status of the floodplains prior to the event before coming to the conclusion whether any damage was caused by holding it there last year.
It said the seven-member expert committee, which has held the organisation responsible for the damage, has undertaken an exercise on a "completely erroneous factual matrix".
On the issue of damage to wetlands on the site, the AoL said that the committee has completely erred in assuming that the event site had such water bodies.
"First and foremost, no wetlands existed on the event site as contemplated by the legal regime or otherwise. It is submitted that in order to consider any land as wetland, it is imperative that the statutory procedure and process by which such land is identified and declared to be a wetland is followed in its entirety," it said.
The hearing remained inconclusive and will continue tomorrow.
The AoL had in the last hearing raised doubts over the satellite images used by the experts committee headed by Shashi Shekhar, Secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources, to estimate the damage.
"The committee while submitting its report on July 28 last year has relied on a single Google satellite image of September 15, 2015. There were multiple Google images available between 2000-2015, but the committee has chosen only one image out of all the pictures which was during peak monsoons.
"At that point of the year, there were heavy rains at that site and selection of that image to ascertain the damage is questionable," the AOL counsel had claimed. The three-day World Culture Festival was held in March last year.
It had said that the experts committee appointed by the NGT had admitted in the report, dated November 28, 2016, that it did not know the condition of the site before the event.
Earlier, the expert committee had told the NGT that a whopping Rs 42.02 crore would be required to restore Yamuna floodplains which was ravaged due to the AoL cultural extravaganza.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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