The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the government and civic bodies to file area-wise reports on the number of dengue deaths and the number of people suffering from the deadly disease.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice B C Patel and Justice A K Sikri pulled up the Centre, the state government and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the New Delhi Municipal Corporation for their failure to implement its 1998 orders on dengue.
Advocate Rajiv Awasthi, on whose application the bench took suo motu cognizance of the issue, pointed out that these agencies had done nothing to implement the orders.
The court asked the respondents to file their respective Action Taken Reports in the form of affidavits by October 29.
Centre's counsel Sanjay Jain informed the court that the government has taken several steps, including preparing a National Dengue Control Programme, which has been merged with other vector-borne disease control programmes like in the case of malaria, filaria, kala-azar and Japanese Encephalitis.
"Approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for implementation of the Integrated National Vector-borne Disease Control Programme also has since been obtained on October
15," Health Ministry Under Secretary P K Chakrabarti said in an affidavit filed through Jain.
Earlier, the Delhi government's counsel, V K Shali, claimed that all necessary action has been taken to tackle dengue and that no further directions were needed in the matter.
