In his petition Joshi has submitted a list of several hundred community ponds that have disappeared, usurped by colonizers and builders who have raised multi-storeyed structures.

 The High Court had directed the district authorities to take appropriate steps to remove encroachments and restore the ponds to their original status.

 Joshi told Agratoday.in, "Government agencies did not positively respond to the directions and I therefore approached the HC which on January 7 has sent out notices to the concerned officials to explain why action should not be initiated against them."

 According to Joshi, the Taj city had more than 400 ponds once. "Now only a handful is left. These could also disappear soon. Most have been gobbled up by builders," he explains.

 For more than two decades Joshi has been single-handedly leading environmental battles but now says in utter despair "Vaishyaon ka cheer haran nahin ho sakta (you can not dis-robe prostitutes). These people have no shame and are blind in self interest."

In his petition Joshi refers to a statement of the district magistrate who admits 92 ponds have been encroached upon but action has not been taken so far to free the ponds of illegal structures that have come up.

"In Bodla area, the government agency DUDA (district urban development agency) has constructed a building right in the middle of the pond," Joshi points out.

In the commercial centre Sanjay Place in the heart of the city, in the 1970s there were two huge ponds fed by a canal minor regularly for the central jail which has now been shifted. "On one pond stands the LIC building and on the other a so-called park has been developed close to a mall," points out green activist Ravi Singh.

Joshi had originally filed his petition in 2005. The HC directed the district authorities to take action after detailed survey. But nothing happened. He followed it up with another list of 102 villages with ponds that had been included in the Metro-city.

"When no action was taken and the officials kept ignoring my pleas I again approached the High Court which has now called five senior officials to file their responses or face the contempt of court proceedings," Joshi said.