States ignoring SC on borewells
The incident of baby Mahi falling in an abandoned borewell in Manesar area close to the national capital has once again brought to the focus the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court with strict orders to the states to cap all borewells in view the little children often falling victims due to their apathy.
However, the Mahi incident has raised a question mark on the implementation of the SC guidelines, laid down in February 2010 in a 'suo motu' action by the court, which in a subsequent order passed on July 10 the same year, had made the chief secretaries personally accountable for the failure to implement the norms.
It would be interesting to see whether the Haryana government and its chief secretary would be made accountable to the top court in view of Mahi falling into an abandoned borewell on Thursday and the civil and army authorities still struggling to rescue her.
A bench, headed by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia in July 10, 2010 order had asked senior advocate P.S. Patwalia, appointed as amicus curie, to make those chief secretaries as parties whose states had failed to implement the guidelines.
“The menace will not stop unless we take strong action,” the SC had said. It had then fixed a three months deadline for the states to cap all abandoned borewell. And in future they were asked to keep proper tab on digging of each and every borewell and fix responsibility on the drilling agencies.
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