HC told central library floors getting cooled, disposes of PIL

Panaji: The high court of Bombay at Goa on Monday disposed of the public interest litigation (PIL) on the non-functioning air-conditioning in the state central library, after state govt told the bench that all the library’s floors, including the attic, are now “receiving sufficient cooling”.
When the case came up for hearing on Monday, amicus curiae Eeshan Usapkar told the court that he has verified the cooling on all floors by personally visiting the library.
Although the library’s entire AC system was recently replaced, the cooling wasn’t reaching the attic, following which govt installed four tower ACs. The matter of cooling the attic was resolved after these tower ACs were installed, he said.
The amicus curiae suggested that govt puts in place an annual maintenance contract for ACs, so that future problems are avoided. He also recommended that all pending civil works including roofing and gap closing be completed expeditiously to avoid loss of cooling and to reduce the load on ACs.
In Dec, the library's curator stated that no damage was caused to any books, manuscripts, and documents due to the non-functioning of ACs. Usapkar also verified this, and submitted to the high court that no damage was seen to have been caused.
In Nov, the high court had taken suo motu cognisance of TOI’s article on the library’s non-functional ACs, and issued notice to govt. The court expressed concern about the “treasure house of almost 40,000 volumes of pre-Liberation collection of books”, as well as “rare and invaluable manuscripts”.
Govt then issued a contract of Rs 2 crore to replace the AC system at the library.