By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Wednesday issued contempt-of-court notices to the chief secretaries of five states for their failure in complying with its order to set up as many Anganwadi centres in their states as approved by the central government till September 2006.
The contempt-of-court notices were issued by a bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S.H. Kapadia to the chief secretaries of Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Orissa.
The bench ordered the top bureaucrat of each of the five states to appear before it personally to explain why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them after failure to open the requisite number of Anganwadi centres, meant to provide day care and nutrients to children, adolescent girls and lactating mothers among the poor.
The bench also asked the chief secretaries to file affidavits by Aug 24 detailing the reasons for their lackadaisical approach in setting up Anganwadi centres under the central government's 13-year-old Integrated Child Development scheme (ICDS).
The bench issued notice to the Orissa chief secretary too though the state has set up as many as 80 percent of the approved Anganwadi centres.
As the Orissa government counsel rued that his state's chief secretary too was being issued the notice despite the state's "satisfactory performance" in meeting its target, the bench retorted that the target was 100 percent and not merely 80 percent.
While issuing notices, the bench said, "The contempt notices be issued against them for non-compliance of the court order. They would also explain why the exemplary actions be not taken against them for non-compliance of the order. They shall also indicate in their affidavits the name of the officers responsible for non-compliance of the order."
The court took the drastic measure while examining various states' dismal performance in setting up the requisite number of Anganwadi centres following a public interest lawsuit, filed by the People Union for Civil Liberties.
The bench had ordered the states July 9 to immediately clear the backlog in setting up Anganwadis sanctioned up to September 2006. The bench had set July 15 as the deadline.
For centres approved up to January 2007, the bench had set a Sep 30 deadline to make them functional.
On the last occasion, the bench had said, "It is made clear that if there is any non-observance of the time period fixed it would be seriously viewed."
The bench in its earlier order had said that as per the ICDS, the central government is to sanction 1.4 million Anganwadi centres till December 2008, out of which 1.05 million have been sanctioned till March 2007.
Pointing out that the number of Anganwadi centres operational as on Sep 30, 2006 was merely 781,000, the bench had rued that even the sanctioned centres had not become operational and their number was 272,000.