Jail Term, Rs 25,000 Fine For Leaving Abandoned Borewells Open In MP
The officials, entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring such abandoned open borewells, will be held accountable if they fail to take any action in the matte: Reports
BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh government has prepared a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), constituting the policy for establishing and maintaining borewells in the rural areas in the state, providing a hefty fine and imprisonment for leaving them open after their abandonment.
While the policy primarily aims at providing safe drinking water in the rural areas, the SOP was prepared to curb the incidents of tragic deaths of kids after falling into the abandoned open borewells, officials said on Friday.
Earlier, the owners of the abandoned open borewells got away with fines only but now they will attract imprisonment, besides a hefty fine up to Rs 25,000, under the new borewell policy, officials said.
The SOP has provided that the owner of the borewell will have to close it by filling it with soil or with concrete within 90 days of digging it if the owner chooses to abandon it for not getting water, failing which the owner and the digging agency will not only be penalized but also face imprisonment, the officials said.
The owner then has to take a photograph of the closed borewell and upload it in the government portal opened for the purpose.
The officials, entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring such abandoned open borewells, will be held accountable if they fail to take any action in the matter.
The state government has also made it mandatory for the farmers and others who plan to dig borewells in their farmlands or houses to seek sanction from the authorities concerned for it and also register it.
The SOP for maintaining the borewells comes in the wake of no less than a dozen mishaps in which kids slipped into the abandoned open borewells while playing in the nearby areas in the last couple of years in the state.
At least six kids had met tragic deaths in these mishaps during the period.
The rescue operations in such incidents usually involve a complicated, expensive and long process.
The new borewell policy proposed to make the owners and digging agencies to pay the expenses of rescue operations if any such mishap occurred in the open borewells, abandoned by them.
The SOP, prepared, will help curb the mishaps in the abandoned open borewells, state public health engineering (PHE) minister Sampatia Uike said.
