SC suspends its direction on disaster fund

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The Supreme Court today suspended its direction to the Centre for creation of National Disaster Mitigation Fund to tackle drought-like situation in certain states, saying that it was not a proper direction under the provision of the law.
A bench of Justices M B Lokur and N V Ramana said that it was a wrong direction after Additional Solicitor General P S Narasimha submitted that the notification regarding the fund under provision of Disaster Management Act has not been issued.
Narasimha informed the bench that no notification in this regard has been issued and there exists a flexi fund which could be used for the purpose of disaster relief and reducing the risk of disaster.

Section 47 of the Disaster Management Act envisages that the central government may by notification in the Official Gazette constitute a fund to be called the National Disaster Mitigation Fund for projects exclusively for the purpose of mitigation.
The apex court in its verdict on May 11 had said that it was "quite surprised" that the fund even after 10 years of the enforcement of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 was not created.
"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 and will continue to be so until the provisions of the Disaster Management Act are faithfully implemented," it had said.

Narasimha, appearing for the Centre, filed the status report on the implementation of the apex court's direction issued with regard to the drought-like situation and its management.
He said that as directed by the bench, a National Disaster Management Plan has been put in place and several of its directions have been implemented.
The court was hearing a PIL by NGO Swaraj Abhiyan which had alleged that parts of 12 states -- Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana and Chattisgarh -- were hit by drought and the authorities were not providing adequate relief.