Above: Baba Ramdev/Photo Courtesy: Facebook.com  

On August 31, an Allahabad High Court division bench of Justices Tarun Agarwala and Ashok Kumar had ordered that status quo be maintained on the 4,500 acres of land that had been given to Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Yog Sansthan to develop a food park. The order was till the next hearing.

The Court had also directed the district magistrate (DM) of Gautam Buddh Nagar and the Yamuna Industrial Development Authority to file their counter affidavits on the petition of Noida resident Asaf Khan.

The petitioner had alleged that building of the food park will entail felling of nearly 6,000 trees, causing serious environmental damage.

That order seems to have fallen on deaf ears. On Monday (December 18) Justice A K Mishra of the Court issued a contempt notice on Ramdev, director Patanjali Ayurveda Limited, the DM Gautam Buddha Nagar, Brajesh Narayan Singh and Arun Veer Singh, CEO of Yamuna Express Authority. This contempt notice was issued at the petition of Sohan Lal.

The court has accused all the above of defying the status quo order.

—India Legal Bureau