ISHA FOUNDATION Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Hon'ble Acting Chief Justice Isha Foundation, Coimbatore has filed this writ petition seeking the following prayer, as amended by the order of Court dtd. 9/11/2022:-

(2.) Mr.Sathish Parasaran, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner is a volunteer-run registered pubilc charitable trust founded in the year 1992 with aims to bring the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing for everyone. It is also a non-profit yoga educational organisation associated with several projects like greenhands, action of rural rejuvenation, isha vidya, rally for rivers etc. The petitioner also received the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar in the year 2010 for undertaking activities including conducting classes and training on agroforestry to farmers, plant nurseries in schools and tree planting in urban centres. The petitioner also had set up the Isha Yoga Center in the year 1994 to run a group of educational institutions, offering variety of courses such as Yoga, Classical Arts and Sanskrit through a Gurukula format and the educational institution being affiliated to the ICSE Board. The petitioner established the Isha Yoga Centre with buildings organically covering 48.3 hectares of 1,25,849 sq.m. built up area from the year 1994 onwards near Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, out of which an extent of 28,279 sq.m. of land had been used for construction even before the Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006 came into force and thereafter, an extent of 91,519 sqm was constructed between the years 2006 and 2012. Adding further, the learned Senior Counsel submitted that the Isha Yoga Centre has been created for the well being of the society and all the buildings at the Isha Yoga Centre are primarily used for educational purposes. It is also the claim of the petitioner that the petitioner has been accredited by the Ministry of Home Affairs to conduct yoga programs under which student visas are issued to students from multiple countries, because the petitioner is working in collaboration with the Ministry of Ayush, Government of India for conducting various yoga programs. Besides, Isha Home School, a residential school under the ICSE Board, it is also running Isha Hatha Yoga School by providing certificate courses for the students from 60+ countries to each hatha yoga across the world.

(3.) While so, the petitioner made an application for grant of necessary approvals and the Director of Town and Country Planning granted a conditional approval on 3/5/2017 to the building plan on condition that the petitioner shall not commence any activity, excepting fencing of the site and construction of temporary shed for guard, without obtaining environmental clearance under the EIA Notification 2006 from the State Level Environmental Impact Assessment Authority, the fifth respondent herein. Therefore, the petitioner applied for environmental clearance under category 8(a) of the EIA Notification dtd. 14/9/2006 and the same was submitted to the fifth respondent. Besides, the petitioner also applied for environmental clearance under S.O.804(E) dtd. 14/3/2017 read with S.O.1030(E) dtd. 8/3/2018 issued by the first respondent, which prescribed a detailed procedure to obtain environmental clearance for the projects that were already commenced without clearance under the EIA Notification 2006.