Seventy four species of macrophytes, 90 species of phytoplankton, 62 species of zooplankton, 55 species of benthos, 36 fish species and 131 bird. A natural thermostat for the city. One ancient river.

All dying a slow and steady death because of a tourist-attraction-cum-temple, a residential colony from the days of the Commonwealth Games, a contentious bus depot and now a World Cultural Festival organized by a spiritual-humanitarian guru.

Over the past week, though, New Delhi saw a last-ditch attempt to save the Yamuna. Environment activist Manoj Mishra, of Yamuna Jiye Andolan, filed a petition in the National Green Tribunal to stop Art of Living (AoL) from holding a cultural mega event on the floodplains of Yamuna.

This is what happened next. 

Day 1: March 7, Monday

Mahashivratri is a festival celebrating Lord Shiva. Legend has it that the gods requested Shiva to bathe in Yamuna to rid him of the pain of Sati’s death. When Shiva did so, his sorrow turned the waters of the Yamuna black. It was on Mahashivratri that the hearing was first scheduled but since it is also a central government holiday, the National Green Tribunal decided to postpone the hearing to the next day.

Construction work continued on the floodplains of Yamuna, where World Culture Festival would begin four days later, on March 11.

Day 2: March 8, Tuesday

I reached the tribunal court on Copernicus Marg at 10.30am. A perfunctory security frisking lead me to the tribunal’s complex, green and clean with not a single cigarette bud or paan stain in view.

Petitioner Manoj Mishra sat in the portico, talking to a few journalists. “We are the fifteenth case. It’ll take another 20 minutes or so for it to start,” he said. Behind him stood confident lawyers with their associates, each wielding weighty tomes on environment law. You could sense the unease and anxiety beneath everyone’s fragile composure. The media was slowly waking up to the serious implication of World Culture Festival being organised at this chosen venue. Everyone either wanted to be politically correct or wanted someone else to stop being so.

While in the court room, headlines were in the making, catchy keywords and hashtags were being born and scoops were being scooped, approximately eight kilometres away, in another part of Delhi, daily wage labourers were busy erecting the colossal monument for “world peace” — a 40ft by 1,000 ft by 200 ft stage on the floodplains of Yamuna.

Making my way through the crowd of advocates, respondents and applicants in the lobby, I entered Court 2 where the hearing for Manoj Misra Versus Delhi Development Authority & Ors was scheduled.

Once inside the court, I squirmed my way through the black coats and found a vacant spot in the row behind the one designated for advocates. The whitewashed courtroom walls with its pillars and painted golden and green curtains looked like a sad replica of a set out of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana from back in the day.

There were hushed talks, hurried scribbles on notepads, impatient advocates and a general hum of excitement. As the white-turbaned courtroom guards marched in, followed by the Bench, everyone rose. I was reminded of my school days, but my attempt to be a coolly disrespectful back-bencher was foiled by the glares of two advocates standing next to me.

First to argue before the Bench headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar was Raju Bansal, the counsel for Delhi Development Authority. Bansal weighed in on the issue by launching into a serious discourse on linguistics. The counsel elaborately deconstructed words like “construction” and “permanent”. The aim seemed to be to avoid calling the activity of AoL on the Yamuna floodplains a permanent construction or even a construction – it was merely a jugaad venue. All this because a previous NGT notification had already banned construction on the floodplains. Bansal chose to ignore how the DDA itself had revoked permission to AoL last year, for the very same reason.

Why the permission was granted this year was a question that wasn’t answered.

Bansal’s rhetoric appeared to have succeeded in tranquilising most of the court. However, his lengthy dissection of the English language was cut short by Justice Kumar, who asked the counsel to read the meaning of “admission”.

Next was the counsel for Uttar Pradesh irrigation department, Savitri Pandey. Apart from the fact that the permission for creating a parking facility on UP irrigation department land had been given to AoL, Pandey could not answer a single question posed by the chairperson. She was asked if the AoL had gone beyond the area allocated to it and if the UP irrigation department had carried out an assessment of the environmental damage. Her responses were limited to monosyllables and silence.

If the counsel for UP irrigation department displayed an incredible level of cluelessness, lawyers for Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) and Ministry of Water Resources set a new standard with their exemplary display of how to pass the buck.

The two counsels heaped the responsibility upon each other for granting permission to AoL for holding the event on Yamuna floodplains, till the Bench asked them to figure it out with the help of a rulebook. How could the MOEF & CC come to the conclusion that the event, which was brought to NGT for its environment implications, did not require the ministry’s permission? We were to ponder this over the lunch break.

During lunch, when nicotine/caffeine/generally-starved journalists thronged around a little make-shift chai stall outside the court, certain elements affiliated to the Hindu Mahasabha decided to pick fights and declare people anti-national.

Clad in a blood-red robe and a saffron bandana, one of the aggressive “nationalists” claimed that Mishra, the main petitioner against AoL, was working with the Ford foundation, which according to them is a “terrorist organisation”. Also, Mishra had eaten up all the fish in Yamuna, they insisted.

While I can’t vouch for Mishra’s appetite — all the fish in the Yamuna is a lot of fish — I did ask him about his dietary preferences. It turns out Mishra is a vegetarian.

After the lunch break, AoL counsel Saraswati Akshmana Nath argued her case. She appeared unsure about the number of people expected to attend the event. Neither did she explain how the gigantic stage being constructed could stand above the surface, even though she vehemently defended this point. Nath also had no answer for the Bench when it asked about the reasons for revocation and re-granting of the permission by DDA last year.

The day ended with the Bench asking AoL counsel to provide answers to the following questions:

1) How many people are expected at World Culture Festival?

2) Had AoL conducted any environmental impact assessment on the site?

3) On what basis did they get the permission to hold the event after being denied once?

All the counsels of MoEF & CC, DPCC, water department, NCT and disaster management looked clueless in front of the Bench when asked whether they had carried out an environmental cost assessment of the region.

Day 2: March 9, Wednesday

The final day of the hearing saw the entrance of the court cordoned off by police barricades. A police van was stationed near the main gate, surrounded and occupied by the world’s most bored and sleepy cops. The security had been beefed up following yesterday’s scuffle on fish eating and Ford Foundation.

Inside the court too an unspoken urgency prevailed. The World Culture Festival was just a day away and the fate of the Yamuna rested upon the NGT.

AoL’s Saraswati Akshmana Nath began by answering the questions posed to her yesterday. She said 5 lakh people were expected to attend the event. As a private organisation, AoL could not conduct an assessment and in the matter of re-granting permission, Nath claimed ignorance.

The two confused counsels of MoEF & CC and Water Resources didn’t show any signs of improvement on the second day. The counsel for Ministry of Water Resources chose to remain conspicuous by his absence for most parts of the hearing.

Finally, the prosecution argued its case. Sanjay Parekh, a soft-spoken man, argued that while Article 19 gave the right to every citizen of freedom of expression, it didn’t mean that that right can be used to infringe upon other people’s rights. Yamuna being a natural resource belongs to all and cannot be usurped by AoL to conduct a cultural event, which will have a negative impact on the region.

As some people in the court house said, “to spice things up”, the fringe Hindutva elements from the last day’s scuffle were also in the court.  But, they limited themselves to their principle expertise: whataboutery. What about people from Ajmer Sharif who were camping on the banks of Yamuna near Majnu ka Tila? They were shown the door by the chairperson.

It was time for deliberation and the final order. What was to be a 10-minute period turned into an hour and the courtroom became more crowded than during the hearing. Incoming journalists hurriedly corroborated and collected facts.

Finally, the court’s judgement: AoL was allowed to go ahead with the event, but an initial fine of Rs 5 crore was imposed on AoL. (Sri Sri has now made it clear that he’d rather go to jail than pay up. Clearly, he Sri Sri has got the message after Kanhaiya Kumar’s jail spree that only good can come of such a sojourn.) A fine of Rs 1 lakh was imposed on Delhi Pollution Control Committee for failing to exercise due diligence and improper exercise of authority. DDA was fined Rs 5 lakh for non-performance of its statutory function.

The Bench cited the case of SP Muthuraman versus Union of India and Ors stating that since earlier orders by NGT to stop such activities had been overruled by the Supreme Court. It would only impose a fine.

A tribunal that was set up to protect the environment had based its decisions on legal precedence rather than environmental impact.

The irony of this situation was lost as the clamour of media channels took over. The weeks and hours spent petitioning and arriving at this order were reduced to quotable quotes and crisp bites. The aggressive “nationalists”, applicant Manoj Mishra and counsels from both sides were busy giving interviews.

Some 8 km away, on the other side of the city, river Yamuna meandered sluggishly through Delhi.