Bengaluru: Following the death of Kaveri, a six-year-old girl who fell inside a dry borewell on April 22 in Jhunjarawadi village in Athani taluk of Belagavi district, the state government has decided to make Deputy Commissioners (DCs) of every district responsible for open borewells.
A circular in this regard has been issued by the revenue secretary Gangaram Baderia and as per the circular District Commissioners will be held responsible for any kind of accidents involving the open borewells.
It can be recalled that Belagavi district administration took around 54 hours to lift the body of Kaveri who was struck at about 34 feet beneath the surface. Services of National Disaster Response Force(NDRF) personnel was used to lift the body.
What data suggests?
In August 2014, at Sulikeri village of Badami taluk of Bagalkot district a six-year-old boy Timmanna Hatti fell inside a dry borewell and died. Immediately after the incident, the state government had issued similar circular making the DCs responsible for any borewell deaths. But till now no officer has been booked as per the circular.
Immediately after the Sulikeri incident state government had launched
a drive to close all unused dry borewells across the state. Through this drive state government was able to close 48,679 borewells in the government land and 99,107 borewells in the private land.
According to an estimation, across the country every year 1,500 incidents of children falling inside the uncapped borewells are reported.In the year 2010, Supreme Court issued directions to all the state governments to cap all the borewells and issued a separate guidelines.
But most of the guidelines are yet to be implemented.
