The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the chief secretaries of five states, including Karnataka, to present themselves before the court on August 24 for not implementing its order to set up Anganwadi centres.

A bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia asked the chief secretaries of Orissa, Bihar, Kerala, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh to present their reports regarding the order delivered by the court on June 9. If the states don’t comply with the order, they will invite the wrath of the court on the next hearing on August 10.

The court has taken a serious view of the states failing to set up anganwadi (Integrated Child Development Services) centres sanctioned and funded by the Union government for children below six years in rural areas, which functioned as pre-primary schools with mid-day meal facility.

“Those centres which have been sanctioned up to January 2007 shall be made functional by September 30. If there is non-observance of the time period fixed, it will be seriously viewed,” the court had said in its order.
The supreme court said that the backlog had to be cleared to ensure that the funds granted by the Centre for the purpose were properly utilised.