NGT committee is biased, unscientific and lacks credibility

Spirituality & Human Values | Updated: | 5 min read


NGT committee is biased, unscientific and lacks credibility  

Whatever has been stated by the NGT's expert committee holds no water. Considering the facts mentioned in the article here, it is clear that the intent of the committee is to merely malign the name of The Art of Living. The kind of evidence submitted by this committee amounts to nothing less than a scientific fraud.

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The National Green Tribunal (NGT) committee is biased, unscientific and lacks credibility.

All facts point to the male fide intention of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) committee to malign The Art of Living.

NGT Facts Floodplain Facts Shashi Shekhar’s Letter Satellite Images



The expert committee of the NGT1 is clearly biased. The points below illustrate their bias amply:

  1. Based on a perfunctory inspection of the World Culture Festival grounds before the event, the committee recommended a random figure of Rs 120 crore as compensation. The Art of Living later discovered a letter written by the Chairman of the Expert Committee Mr Shashi Shekhar to the NGT admitting that this was an “inadvertent mistake”. This shows the committee’s premeditated stand.
    Having already made this mistake, it is clear that it has now submitted a report only to justify the inadvertent conclusions reached earlier or risk being discredited. Therefore, knowing about its existing mistake and bias, this committee was not the right one to investigate the matter and make a report. The tribunal should have appointed an independent committee of experts to do the investigation as we had requested. As it stands, the report is absolutely baseless and has no credibility.
  2. One of the expert committee members, Prof C R Babu, has been canvassing the petitioner Manoj Mishra’s case before the media! In an interview to the media, he maligned The Art of Living, concluding that event had caused damage even before any assessment was done. This clearly shows his bias.
  3. Yet another expert committee member of the NGT, Prof Brij Gopal, has close connections with the petitioner, Manoj Mishra. In the last few years, he has conducted joint investigations into another project with the petitioner, travelled and worked with him on other projects. These facts were not disclosed.

    Proximity between NGT petitioner in the WCF case Manoj Misra & NGT principal committee member Prof. Brij Gopal, who is also part of the current damage assessing team:

    1. Joint Lecture: Read Article : Here Expert committee member Prof Brij Gopal and Manoj Mishra were speakers in 2013. Their association is an old one. Also, worthy to note that he says Yamuna is already dead in this report.
    2. Joint Visit to River Ken: Read ArticleRead Tweet They had a close rapport to visit river Ken together.
    3. Joint Drafting of Delhi Declaration: Read Article

    Together they have opposed the interlinking of the rivers.

  4. The report, recently submitted by the committee to the NGT, contains no analysis, no in-depth investigation, no reports of any scientific tests to support the conclusions. The conclusions in the report are merely the opinion of the expert committee without scientific basis. The report does not reflect the true state of the WCF ground. How can such a report with no scientific study or credibility be entertained?
  5. The report is unscientific in its assessment. Any scientific assessment must have a quantifiable element to it. Even after four months, the committee has not been able to attach a single evaluation to quantify the so-called damage that they have reported. This raises serious questions about the committee’s credibility.
  6. The committee has classified the WCF ground as a “wetland”. However, the Wetland Atlas of Delhi released recently, the 1986 survey of India map, and many other authentic government documents do not show this land as a “wetland”. By labelling this as a wetland, the committee is manipulating the facts to bring the grounds under the gamut of environmental clearance. The truth is this land has always been classified as a floodplain; a sandy floodplain, at that.
  7. The committee’s finding of compaction is once again unscientific. Scientifically, the characteristic of sandy soil or a riverbed soil is that it can never be compacted! The claim that the Art of Living flattened the land is completely baseless. The grounds were depicted as a flat land in 1985.

Considering the facts above, the report submitted by this committee amounts to nothing less than a scientific fraud.

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