Mosquitoes don't wait for meetings: Delhi HC

New Delhi: “Mosquitoes don’t wait for meetings,” the Delhi high court on Tuesday said as it ticked off the Centre, AAP government and the municipal corporations for only holding discussions and not taking any preventive steps to check vector-borne diseases.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said that the authorities at the ground level have not taken any preventive steps, including fumigation and issuing of advertisements to inform the public, to curb the spread of vector-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya. It said that despite Tuesday being the National Dengue Day, no awareness programmes or advertisements were run by the authorities.

The bench said the Right to Life under article 19 includes the right to know and people should be informed and made awarene of ways to prevent mosquito breeding and the treatments available for dengue and chikungunya, which the court termed as a “painful disease”. “We will be extremely pained if there is loss of life,” it said and added that if all the authorities had been doing their job, “we would not have been talking like this about these diseases.”

Observing that the authorities have been working till date in a “haphazard manner without any scientific basis”, the bench issued a slew of directions, including geographical mapping of the areas where vector-borne diseases occurred last year and preparing time-schedules for carrying out fumigation, inspections and booking of violations. The bench said that geographic mapping and the schedules for the preventive tasks should have been prepared earlier and not after the directions of the court.

It asked how the corporations would know where to fumigate if they were not even aware where mosquito breeding was ongoing. On being informed that Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and lieutenant governor Anil Baijal were looking into the issue and high-level meetings were taking place, the bench shot back, “Mosquitoes do not wait for the meetings.” It said already 90 cases of chikungunya and 36 cases of dengue have surfaced, as per news reports, and that too, when humidity levels are yet to rise and the monsoon yet to arrive. It asked the corporations to file a status report containing not only the mapping but also the preventive steps taken and listed the matter for hearing on May 22.