Cuttack, Dec. 16: Orissa High Court has set a two-week deadline for the state government to provide an update on steps taken to frame rules for the Orissa Fire Service Act, which was passed 23 years ago.

The court set the limit yesterday while hearing a PIL seeking its intervention to frame the rules necessary for the act's implementation. Cuttack resident and lawyer Shivsankar Mohanty had filed the petition.

The act had been passed in the Assembly in 1993 when Biju Patnaik was the chief minister. But, the state is yet to approve a proposed set of rules under the legislation.

After the October 17 fire incident at the dialysis unit of IMS and Sum Hospital in Bhubaneswar, the director-general (fire services) Binay Behera expressed his helplessness over the hospitals running without fire safety measures. Framing the act's rules will give them executive power to initiate action against erring hospitals, he said.

In his petition, Mohanty also sought the court's direction for the fire safety measures in private hospitals and clinical establishments by the state government.

The court posted the case for hearing on January 27 and allowed the state two weeks' time after its counsel sought time to file a reply. The division bench of Chief Justice Vineet Saran and Justice B.R. Sarangi also asked the petitioner to file a rejoinder to the state's reply within a week.

Earlier, an ex-service man of the Indian Air Force and RTI activist had drawn the attention of the Chief Justice to 568 registered private hospitals and nursing homes that were running without fire safety certificates in Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri.

In a letter petition on October 20, Jayanta Kumar Das sought the court's direction to close those private hospitals and a CBI probe into the tragedy at the Sum hospital, which claimed 21 lives and left over a hundred injured.

The letter petition has not been taken up by the high court for hearing so far.

Das, on the basis of information elicited under the RTI Act from the fire services wing, stated that fire safety certificates had been issued to only three private hospitals in Bhubaneswar - Apollo Hospitals, AMRI Hospital and Kalinga Hospital, while 198 registered private hospitals and nursing homes were running without them.

The high court has also restrained the state government from going ahead to cancel the Sum hospital's clinical licence and seal the facility for flouting the safety norms. The restriction will continue till December 21. The court imposed the restriction in response to a petition filed by the hospital authorities challenging the notice issued to it on October 18, a day after the fire.

The Khurda district administration had issued the showcause notice to the management for flouting the fire safety norms.