Supreme Court: This court is not a garbage collector

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Centre for filing an 845-page affidavit on solid waste management in the country and said, “This court is not a garbage collector.”

A bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepk Gupta hearing a suo motu petition relating to the death of seven-year- old boy in dengue fever in 2016 refused to take on record the affidavit and said the government cannot dump “junk” before it.

Justice Lokur told Central government counsel Wasim Quadri “What are you trying to do? Are you trying to impress us? We are not impressed. You are trying to dump everything on us. We are not going to accept it. Don’t do this. Whatever junk you have, you dump it before us. We are not garbage collectors. Be absolutely clear about this.”

The counsel informed the court that they have received information from 22 states about constitution of state-level advisory boards and have compiled data received from the respective states.

Justice Lokur observed “there is no point in filing affidavits if they contain nothing. We are not taking this affidavit on record. You have not seen it and you want us to see this affidavit”. The bench asked the Centre and States to file a better affidavit in three weeks furnishing all details indicating whether the states and union territories have constituted state level advisory boards in accordance with the provisions of Solid Waste Management Rules 2016 giving the names of members. In 2005 the court taken suo motu cognisance of the death of a seven-year-old boy due to dengue after he was allegedly being denied treatment by five private hospitals and subsequent suicide by his parents.

The court had earlier expressed grave concern over deaths due to vector-borne diseases like dengue and chikungunya and said that lack of waste management was the cause for several lives being lost across the country from such diseases.