Indore, Jan 28 (IANS) The youth wing of the Madhya Pradesh Congress has launched a nine-day ‘Jan Adhikar Nyay Yatra’ from Wednesday, demanding clean drinking water and higher compensation for families of those who died after consuming contaminated water in Indore’s Bhagirathpura area.

State Youth Congress media cell chairman Abhigyan Shukla said the march began at 11 a.m. from the statue of Devi Ahilya in Rajwada and would cover all Assembly segments of Indore district during the nine days.

“This nine-day protest march will focus on one Assembly constituency each day, covering 10 to 15 km on foot to explain the main objective of the journey to the general public. The Youth Congress will demand that the administration take strict action against those responsible for the deaths caused by the water crisis in Bhagirathpura,” Shukla told IANS.

He said Congress workers would seek action against state Urban Development Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and Indore Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargav. The party will also demand Rs 1 crore compensation for each affected family and a judicial inquiry into the incident.

The state government has announced compensation of Rs 2 lakh for 23 families. The Congress, for its part, provided Rs 1.5 lakh each to the families of 24 victims during Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Bhagirathpura on January 17, when cheques were distributed.

Meanwhile, during a hearing at the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Tuesday, the state government informed the court that a five-member death audit committee comprising associate and assistant professors from MGM Medical College in Indore had found that 16 of the 23 deaths were caused by an epidemic triggered by contaminated water.

Reports on five other deaths are still awaited.

A division bench of Justices Vijay Kumar Shukla and Alok Awasthi has constituted a commission headed by a former High Court judge to probe the water contamination in Bhagirathpura, observing that the matter requires investigation by an independent and credible authority and “urgent judicial scrutiny”. The panel has been directed to submit an interim report within four weeks of the start of the proceedings.

–IANS

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