The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday directed the member-secretary of the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority to conduct a survey to find out the conditions and facilities of public toilets in Bengaluru city and submit a report within four weeks.
A Division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum issued the direction while hearing a PIL petition filed by Letzkit Foundation, which had complained about maintenance of existing toilets and not providing of sufficient number of toilets as required for city’s floating population.
The Bench said that the survey should include whether the toilets are cleaned or not and the availability of water facility in the toilets.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), during an earlier hearing in July had presented a survey, conducted by the All India Institute of Local Self Government, a private institute, on the status of toilets and their numbers compared to some other major cities in the country.
However, the HC had expressed dissatisfaction that the survey had not conducted the exercise of requirement of ward-wise public toilets for the city though it noticed that the survey had found that number of toilets in city was on lower side when compared to cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The High Court had also found that there is no centralised data of public toilets with the BBMP for proper planning.
