The Supreme Court on Thursday dropped contempt proceedings against the Chief Secretaries of five states after expressing satisfaction over the compliance of its direction to operationalise anganwadi centres (AWCs) in their states.

The Chief Secretaries of Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa and Kerala were asked to appear personally before the apex court for their explanation for non-compliance of its order.

Taking note that except the Chief Secretary of Orissa, other four appeared before it, a Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia said “the personal appearance of the Chief Secretaries who are present in the court are dispensed with”.

While posting the matter after six weeks, the Bench asked the Chief Secretary of Orissa to appear on the next date of hearing. As the court was informed that all states had complied with the order to operationalise the AWCs, the Bench said, “Why do such situation arise that we have to issue contempt notice. The work starts only after we issue contempt notice.” Since the anganwadis, sanctioned till September 2006 have been operationalised, steps should be taken to operationalise those sanctioned up to January 2007, it said.

Meanwhile, affidavits filed by the five states showed that Bihar operationalised 99.5 per cent AWCs, Himachal Pradesh 100 per cent, Kerala 97.7 per cent, Orissa 97.5 per cent and Rajasthan 99.5 per cent. The apex court is monitoring the Government’s programme addressing the care, education, health and nutrition concerns of children under six years and pregnant women under the Integrated Child Development Services.