Pained by the common man's plight in a drought year when prices of food articles have skyrocketed, with `dal' selling at an unaffordable
Rs 100 per kg, the Supreme Court on Tuesday called for all out efforts "in the spirit of patriotic duty" to counter the looming danger.
Though a Bench comprising Justices Markandey Katju and A K Ganguly was hearing a PIL on solving the growing water crisis, the prevailing situation in the country on account of a deficit monsoon did not escape its attention.
It commended the work initiated by a technical expert committee headed by science and technology secretary T Ramaswamy in starting the mission to make saline water drinkable through a cheap process and asked the Centre and the states to fully cooperate with it administratively, financially and technicaly to achieve the objective.
But, having touched upon the "terrible situation" arising out of monsoon failure, the Bench went on to tell the technical expert committee to look for ways and means to alleviate the condition of people staring at an "immediate crisis".
The Centre had on Monday told the SC about its ambitious technology mission "WAR for water" and said that it had already set up a technical expert committee focusing on converting sea water into fresh water to solve the severe shortage of drinking water in the country.
"The technology mission `WAR for Water' is developed on the principle that timely, urgent, cost effective, socially viable and sustainable techno-management solutions are required for solving problems of water scarcity," the Department of Scince and Technology said in an affidavit before the SC in response to the PIL filed by advocate M K Balakrishnan.
The Centre constituted a Technical Expert Committee on `WAR for Water', which stands for `Winning, Augmentation and Renovation for Water', on June 29 and its first meeting is scheduled for August 25, the department said.
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