New Delhi: The Supreme Court today warned
state governments and union territories that failure to comply
with its orders on taking preventive measures like capping of
abandoned borewells, which have been death pits for children,
will invite stern action.
"This will not stop unless we take action," a bench of
Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices K S Radhakrishnan and
Justice Swatanter Kumar said when its attention was drawn to
an incident in which a child fell to her death in a village in
Punjab recently.
The bench was irked as senior advocate P S Patwalia,
who is assisting the court as an amicus curaie, in the matter
submitted that the guidelines laid down by the Centre on the
issue were not being complied with by the authorities.
"Nothing seems to have been done," he told the bench
by narrating the incident in Dhira village near Batala town in
Gurdaspur district where a one-and-a-half year-old girl died
after falling into a 200-foot-deep borewell on June 2.
The bench said it will hear the issue after four weeks
and asked the counsel to make a list of the states which have
not taken action on its Februrary 11 order.
PTI
