NEW DELHI: Even though the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Wednesday fined Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation Rs 5 crores and said that all government authorities have failed to fulfil their duties, it still allowed the foundation’s ‘World Culture Festival’ to take place on the ecologically sensitive banks of the Yamuna.
The tribunal‘s order was on pleas by NGOs and environmentalists who sought cancellation of the event on the grounds that it would seriously endanger the fragile ecosystem on the Yamuna’s riverbed. In fact, earlier on Wednesday, the Delhi high court said the event would be an ecological disaster.
A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar, asked the foundation to deposit the fine — ‘environmental compensation‘, as the bench described it — before the three-day event begins on March 11. In addition, the foundation has to give an undertaking by Thursday, that enzymes will not be released into the Yamuna and that no further degradation of the environment will occur.
DIFFICULT WORDS & MEANINGS
- Foundation: An institution financed by a donation or legacy to aid research, education, the arts,
- Authorities: Persons having the legal power to make and enforce the law; government
- Tribunal: A court of justice
- Sought: To try to obtain (simple past tense and past participle of seek)
- Fragile: Easily broken, shattered, or damaged
- Ecosystem: Any system or network of interconnecting and interacting parts
- Compensation: something given or received as an equivalent for services
- Enzymes: Biological molecules (proteins) that act as catalysts and help complex reactions occur everywhere in life.
Source: Hindustan Times