Groundsmen water the pitch at Wankhede Stadium ahead of the IPL opener between Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiants on Saturday. (Photo: PTI)
With the Bombay high court refusing to grant a stay and posting the matter for a further hearing on Tuesday, the first Indian Premier League match of Season Nine will be played in Mumbai on April 9, and the Wankhede Stadium would get 22,000 million litres of water as scheduled from the municipality.
A division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice M.S. Karnik refused to grant a stay on the season opener while hearing a public interest litigation filed by two Hyderabad NGOs, Loksatta Movement and Foundation of Democratic Reforms seeking to shift IPL matches out of Maharashtra in view of the acute shortage of water in the state and the expected huge amount of water needed during the tournament.
Though the court did not grant a stay on the match, it has directed the government of Maharashtra to conduct an inquiry with the civic body about the source of water for the stadium.
The bench asked acting advocate general Rohit Deo to inform the court on April 12 if the water supplied to the stadiums in tankers was potable or non-potable and if it had any other resources of water to maintain pitches. The judges were of the view that until their query about the source of water to the stadium for maintaining pitches was answered, the issue of granting stay on the matches cannot be considered. “Is it not the duty of the government to find out if water is supplied to anybody illegally when there is a water crises in the state ” asked the judges.
Coming down heavily on the state and the municipal corporation, the bench had said, “People who have money can afford to have as much water as they want, whereas in other places people are getting water once in three days.”
Senior counsel Rafique Dada, on behalf of BCCI, told the court that even when the IPL was not played, international pitches needed to be watered daily twice a day.
“If they are not watered then they would die a natural death,” he said, pointing out that even gardens were watered daily.
Annoyed with this, Justice Kanade said, “Thousands of people are dying due to water shortage and you want to maintain pitches. If you want to say that let the thousands of people die and you would not let the pitches die then we are sorry we are not ready to accept this.”
According to BMC, approximately 22,000 mld water is supplied to Wankhede Stadium for drinking purposes.
