Cuttack, Nov. 10: The Orissa government has been accused of “intentionally misleading the court” on the issue of providing drinking water facility in the anganwadi centres across the state in pursuance of a high court direction issued on a PIL eight months ago.
While the Orissa government claimed that only 290 centres were left without drinking water facilities, the petitioner has now filed a fresh affidavit accusing it of providing tube wells “at their sweet will ignoring court order”. Nearly 4,800 centres do not have the facility on its premises, the affidavit has alleged.
The high court is monitoring provision of drinking water facilities at the centres while adjudicating on a PIL on implementation of the special nutrition programme and the mid-day meal scheme.
The court had, on March 8, directed the rural development department to “see that bore wells are drilled in the centres to facilitate the children to get drinking water by end of June 2011”. When the PIL came up for hearing on Tuesday, the petitioner filed an affidavit. He alleged that “the rural development department has not only complied the high court direction in letter and spirit, but also tried to negate the order by interpreting it in their own way and insisting to provide tube wells at their sweet will ignoring the order”.
“The order was clear that tube wells shall be drilled in the centres and not within a distance of 250 metres and that almost all the centres should be provided with a bore well by end of June 2011,” the affidavit pointed out. It further accused secretary of the child welfare department and that of the rural development department of “intentionally misleading the court with the sole intention of disobeying its direction”.
“Taking note of it vis-à-vis advocate general Ashok Mohanty’s plea for time to take instructions from the government on it, the two-judge bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice B.N. Mohapatra has fixed November 25 for its hearing,” said petitioner Dilip Kumar Mohapatra.
The petitioner said secretary of the child welfare department, along with a report of the rural development department, on April 27, filed an affidavit, which stated that 8,050 centres did not have drinking water facility.