The Uttarakhand High Court has directed the Uttarakhand government to reconstruct the samadhi of Adi Shankara, which had been damaged in the Kedarnath disaster of 2013. On Thursday, the division bench of Chief Justice Raghavendra Singh Chauhan and Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari passed this order while hearing a PIL filed by Ajay Gautam, a Delhi resident.
Earlier, the High Court had asked the state government to reinstall the samadhi within a year, but expressing displeasure at the government not considering it, the court asked why could it not take contempt action against it? After this, the state government filed an affidavit and sought a year’s time.
The Court directed the petitioner to again approach it if the samadhi is not established within a year.
The Uttarakhand government affidavit stated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a dream project to make the samadhi grand and due to the coronavirus period, this project could not be built on time, so the government should be given a year. The Court agreed to this opinion of the government and gave it a year.
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The High Court passed the order on October 10, 2018 and ordered the reinstallation of the samadhi in a year, but the government has not even considered it yet. The petitioner said Adiguru Shankaracharya propagated Devbhoomi all over the world, despite this, the government is silent on the reinstalled of his samadhi while Kedarnath is the dream project of the Prime Minister. Seven years have passed since the disaster and two years since this Court passed the order.