The Uttarakhand High Court has sought a reply from the State Government regarding non-compliance to its earlier order on restoring Adi Shankaracharya’s Samadhi at Kedarnath following the 2013 disaster.

In the past, the High Court had directed that the Samadhi be restored within a year but the same has not been done yet. Expressing its displeasure at this, the division Bench of acting Chief Justice Ravikumar Malimath and Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari asked why should a contempt notice not be issued to the departments concerned, while directing the State Government to submit its explanation and reply in the court within two weeks. The case will be taken up for hearing next on January 14.

It is pertinent to mention here that Delhi resident Ajay Gautam had filed a public interest litigation regarding the restoration of the Samadhi of Adi Shankaracharya near the Kedarnath shrine from where it was swept away during the 2013 disaster. In its order in October 2018, the high court had directed that the Samadhi be restored within a period of one year but this task has not been done so far.

Stating that this is contempt of the High Court order, the petitioner has stated that Adi Shankaracharya had established the Char Dham pilgrimage to shrines across India including to Badrinath in Uttarakhand.

It was Shankaracharya who had made the Uttarakhand region popular around the world, despite which the state government has not done the needful for his Samadhi. This is despite the fact that the Kedarnath reconstruction project is a dream project of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the petitioner added.