The Rajasthan High Court (HC) on Thursday took suo motu cognizance of deaths due to heat wave and stated that there is a need to declare heat wave as national calamity.
So far five people have died in the state due to the ongoing heat wave conditions, said the Rajasthan government and added that media reports on rise in deaths due to heatstroke are “beyond facts”.
The single-judge bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand said that now the time has come when heat waves and cold waves should be declared as national disaster and advance preparations should be made to deal with them.
The court has also directed the state government to provide proper compensation in case of deaths due to heat wave. Along with this, the court has also issued several guidelines for the government.
The HC said that on December 18 , 2015, the central government had introduced the Death Prevention and Cold Wave Bill 2015 in Rajya Sabha, but this Bill has not been able to take the form of law till date.
“Earth is the only planet which can sustain life on it. We do not have a planet B which we can move onto. Earth is home to millions of species including living and non-living,” Justice Anoop Dhand wrote at the beginning of his order,
He wrote that earth is the most precious gift of God to us. This earth has given us everything. The way a mother nourishes her child, the earth has nourished us in the same way, that is why we call it Mother Earth, but it is in trouble.
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“We have to save mother earth so that our future generations can live in a safe environment. If we do not take care of her today, we will lose the chance to see the future generations flourish forever,” he wrote.
The HC also directed the state authorities to sprinkle water on roads that see huge public movement, to provide cooling spaces, shades at traffic signals, roads, highways including drinking water, ORS and aam panna where required, arrangement of possible facilities at health centres for treatment of heat wave patients and issue advisory for all workers who work in open including porters, cart-and-rickshaw pullers, to allow them to rest between 12 noon and 3 pm during extreme heat wave conditions.
The government is further directed to issue alerts in the form of Short Message Service (SMS), FM, Radio, Television, Mobile apps, Print and Electronic Media, Newspapers, etc. to alert the people about extreme heatwave conditions, the HC said.
In the end, the court directed the government to bring suitable legislation to save human and living beings from pollution and consumption of adulterated food items. This is the right time as well as high time for taking appropriate steps to save the future generations from all kinds of life-threatening diseases occurring due to climate changes and adulteration in eatable items.
