As the Bombay high court did not grant a stay and posted the matter for further hearing on Tuesday, the first Indian Premier League (IPL) match will be played in Mumbai on April 9, and Wankhede Stadium will get the 60 lakh litres of water scheduled by the BMC.
A division bench of Justices V.M. Kanade and M.S. Karnik refused to grant any stay on the first cricket match to be played at Wankhede Stadium while hearing a PIL filed by two Hyderabad NGOs, Loksatta Movement and Foundation of Democratic Reforms, seeking to shift the IPL matches out of Maharashtra in view of the acute shortage of water in the state and an expected huge amount of water to be wasted during IPL.
Though the court did not grant any stay on the match, it has directed the Maharashtra government 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 has any other resources of water to maintain pitches.
The judges were of the view that until their query about the stadium’s source of water for maintaining pitches is 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 crisis 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 is not played, the international pitches need to be watered daily twice a day. “If they are not watered twice a day then they would die a natural death,” he said.
He pointed out that even gardens are 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 “
The judges have asked the state and BMC to inform them whether they had formulated any policy for the supply of potable and non-potable water to Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan and other cities in Maharashtra.
The bench also sought to know from the state and the civic body whether any contingency plans had been drawn up in case of further scarcity of water due to a delayed monsoon this year. “Do you propose to import water from other states,-" asked the bench. The bench asked the government to spell out what short-term and long-term measures it has planned to tide over the water crisis.
