Himachal Pradesh Chief minister Virbhadra Singh has attributed the seepage of sewage into main water source to houses constructed upstream the Ashwani Khud water supply scheme.
Two persons died of jaundice on Saturday, one of them at the Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC) in Shimla, official sources said.
Jagdish Vats, a lawyer who was admitted to IGMC in Shimla and was referred to PGI, Chandigarh died in the wee hours on Saturday while another person succumbed to the disease at Indira Gandhi Medical College (IGMC), IGMC sources said.
A 25-year old woman had died of the disease after delivering a baby while another lawyer Rakesh Chandel and one Onkar Nath from Khilani in Shimla died at IGMC on Friday, they said.
With no sign of a let up in the disease, lawyers are contemplating to move the High Court over the issue.
So far more than 1,500 cases of jaundice have been reported in Shimla with the disease spreading to Solan and Sirmaur as well. The BJP has accused the Virbhadra Singh-led government of suppressing the exact number of deaths and claimed that more than 15,000 people were down with jaundice and going to quacks.
The cases of jaundice started pouring in from local hospitals from December end but the government swung into action after it started spreading fast. The situation became serious after a team of Shimla Municipal Corporation, headed by deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar visited the source of Ashwani Khud water supply scheme and found that the water had been contaminated due to mixing of sewage.
Mr Panwar filed a complaint against the contractors of the Sewerage Treatment Plant (STP) and the SP constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) which has arrested seven persons so far including the contractor, an Executive Engineer, two assistant engineers, two junior engineers and a supervisor.
Himachal Pradesh Chief minister Virbhadra Singh has attributed the seepage of sewage into main water source to houses constructed upstream the Ashwani Khud water supply scheme and said that these houses have no proper mechanism for treatment of sewage. He had announced that the Town and Country Planning department would look into matter.