In a landmark decision, Supreme Court on Wednesday held that drought be declared a national disaster and fixed responsibility on Centre to set up a Disaster Mitigation Fund for drought-affected areas within three months.
The court noted lack of preparedness to tackle drought and asked States to have a time frame to declare drought. Scoffing at the States’ attitude in maintaining an “ostrich-like attitude” in declaring a drought and the Centre's attitude of washing its hands off by blaming States of not doing enough, the bench of Justices Madan B lokur and NV Ramana said, “It (Centre) cannot totally wash its hands off on issues pertaining to Article 21 of the Constitution but at the same time, we do not suggest that the authority of the state government to declare a drought or any other similar power is diluted…Surely, if a State Government maintains an ostrich-like attitude, a disaster requires a far more proactive and nuanced response from the Union of India.”
To illustrate, the bench pointed to evidence of drought presented by petitioner NGO Swaraj Abhiyan in states of Bihar, Gujarat and Haryana with the respective State Governments refusing to even acknowledge a possible drought-like situation. It asked the Union Agriculture Ministry to sit with his counterparts in the respective states and assess ground situation.
The apex court was "quite surprised" to learn that neither a National Plan has been drawn nor any National Disaster Mitigation Fund is in place under the Disaster Management Act of 2005. “Evidently, anticipating a disaster such as a drought is not yet in the ‘things to do’ list of the Union of India and ad-hoc measures and knee jerk reactions are the order of the day…we direct the Centre to formulate a National Plan at the very earliest and with immediate concern,” it said.