Deaths rising, govt must declare heatwave 'national calamity': Rajasthan HC

The Rajasthan High Court has appealed to the Centre to declare heatwave as national calamity as death toll due to extreme heat continued to rise in north India.

The court took suo motu cognisance of the deaths due to heatwave and said that the situation in the country was at a critical stage and that there was a lack of adequate action by authorities to protect people.

“Due to extreme weather conditions in the form of (the) heatwave, hundreds of people have lost their lives this month,”  the court said.

It further said, “We do not have a planet B which we can move onto... If we do not take strict action now, we will lose the chance of seeing our future generations flourish forever.”

Emphasizing the severe consequences of the current heatwave and the increasing occurrence of such incidents attributable to climate change, the court stressed the importance of declaring heatwave in India as a "national calamity".

The single-judge Bench of Justice Anoop Kumar Dhand said the time has come for heat and cold waves to be declared a national disaster.

“Looking at the large number of deaths due to extreme heat and cold waves across the country, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) started working on it. There is a need to declare heatwave and cold wave as a national calamity,” the court said.

The unprecedented heatwave in India has claimed over 45 lives in the past 36 hours.

With this, the death toll due to heatwave across the country has reached 87. As many as 19 more people died of heatstroke in western Odisha, 16 in Uttar Pradesh in a single day, while five succumbed to the high temperatures in Bihar, four in Rajasthan, and one in Punjab in one day.

On Friday, India reported at least 40 suspected heat-related deaths, 25 of them of staff deployed on Lok Sabha elections duty in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, as heatwave conditions gripped a large swathe of the country.

According to officials, heat-related deaths were reported from Odisha (10), Bihar (8), Jharkhand (4) and Uttar Pradesh (1) on Thursday. Rajasthan has reported at least five heat-related deaths so far.

The court further issued guidelines for the government aimed at ensuring public safety. These directives include actions such as sprinkling water on roads with significant pedestrian traffic to mitigate heat, installing cooling areas and shelters at necessary traffic junctions, ensuring comprehensive facilities at health centres for treatment of individuals affected by heatwaves, and issuing advisories for outdoor workers, including porters and rickshaw pullers, to permit rest periods between 12 noon and 3 pm during severe heatwave conditions.

Meanwhile, amid rising temperatures in the national capital, the Delhi government has approached the Supreme Court seeking assistance in addressing the escalating water demand amplified by the heatwave.

(With agency inputs)