The Supreme Court has directed all the States to cap all discarded and abandoned borewells in their territories and to properly fence all the working wells to prevent small children falling into them, erecting barbed wire fencing or any other suitable barrier around the well during construction, filling of abandoned tubewells by clay/sand/ boulders/ pebble from bottom to ground level.    

Further, the Supreme Court has directed that in rural areas, monitoring and execution should be done by Panchayat Raj Institutions and in urban areas by the Municipal Corporations/Public Health Departments.    

To look into all possibilities of preventing accidents of children/toddlers falling into open bore-wells in the country, the Union government has formed a committee. The committee was constituted by the Union Ministry of Water Resources in March, 2009. Its main task is to examine possibilities of preventing such fatal accidents, look into the legal and statutory measures available, action required for preventing such accidents and to suggest other administrative and technical measures for prevention of such accidents.    The Committee had framed guidelines to be followed by the States/Union Territory governments for this purpose, said Union Water Resources Minister Harish Rawat in the Rajya Sabha on August 26.    The Minister also reminded the the Supreme Court's directives to all the States & UTs on February 11 in 2010 and August 6, 2010, to take preventive actions on cases of children falling in borewells.