Chhattisgarh HC orders BCCI to give free drinking water

The Chhattisgarh High Court has allowed the holding of two IPL matches at Raipur but at the same time has asked the BCCI to provide free drinking water to the spectators during the matches.

The HC passed the order at Bilaspur and addressed the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh (CSCS) to provide drinking water to the audiences. Raipur is scheduled to host two matches on May 20 and 22 at Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium, Raipur.

Earlier, there was a PIL filed against the matches scheduled in the state citing the drought-like conditions. A division bench of Justices Pritinker Diwaker and Inder Singh Uboweja passed an interim order on two PILs seeking shifting of the IPL matches from Raipur due to the drought in the state, petitioners’ lawyers Rajnish Singh Baghel and Vimlesh Bajpayee said.

However, it was quoted by the panel of Justices that the city municipal corporation will not provide the water and the BCCI or the CSCS will have to arrange their water supplies. “The court observed that drinking water would be made available to the spectators and the officials on duty by the event organisers (BCCI and CSCS), not by the state or the municipal corporation,” the statement said.

“This would be absolutely free of cost and at the same time it would also be the duty of the state and organisers to ensure that no untoward incident like loss of life happens during the IPL matches,” Bajpayee added.

The petitions were filed by Kisan Congress leader Chandrashekhar Shukla and the other by RTI activists Kunal Shukla and Abhishek Pratap Singh. As per the stats, as many as 117 tehsils are affected by drought in the state of Chhattisgarh.

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