The Rajasthan High Court has dismissed a PIL against the proposed construction of three check dams by the respondents near village Ola, District Jaisalmer.
The PIL has been filed by one Sumer Singh. Narpat Singh Rajpurohit, Counsel for the petitioner, submitted that at a dam already exists at the site by the name of Ola Dam, which stores water to irrigate 224 hectares of agricultural land.
The respondents are in the process of constructing three check dams in the stream of this existing dam.
He submitted that due to insufficient rainfall, the existing dam rarely gets filled to full capacity. If the check dams are constructed, the dam would not fill up at all. The petitioners are residents of the village Ola and therefore opposed the construction of these check dams.
While considering the PIL, the Division Bench of Chief Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice Rekha Borana held that in the highly technical and scientific fields, such as conservation of water resources, it is the Government agencies who frame policies and implement the same and the Courts do not have the technical or scientific expertise and cannot upset such policy decisions, unless the same are shown to be mala fide or wholly arbitrary.
“The Courts always have due regard to the executive in the technical and scientific fields. Whether the check dams should be constructed or not and whether construction of check dams have furthered the object of maximum utilization of rain water are issues the Court would not normally enter into. In the result, the public interest petition is dismissed,” the order reads.