MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Wednesday gave the state government a month to issue a circular to all schools fixing the date for implementing a government-approved panel’s recommendations to reduce the weight of school bags. “Instructions you send must not be vague. It must be clear and simple. That a child should not carry a school bag beyond a certain weight,’’ said a bench of Justices V M Kanade and Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi. It added that the circular must name a person who can be held responsible for non-implementation of the directions. “A competent person who can be held responsible, such as a principal or managing committee,’’ it said. The court has been hearing a PIL by activist Swati Patil, seeking that the weight of school bags kids carry be reduced to avoid health problems. She produced a doctor from KEM hospital to establish that children may suffer from backaches, spondylitis, neck pain and other orthopaedic problems if they continue to carry heavy bags regularly to school. Wednesday’s directions came after government advocate Anjali Helekar sought time, saying there are over 1.06 lakh schools and “it will take some time for its implementation”. “All that you have to do is to issue a circular. You can send email. Every school has a website,’’ said Justice Kanade. On July 21 this year, the government had issued a resolution accepting the 44 recommendations of an expert committee that the education department had set up in 2014. But it was ambiguous on its implementation, which led the HC to express concern saying “otherwise it will remain only on paper”. Patil’s advocate Nitesh Nevshe said a locker system should be made available to students to keep their notebooks and texts. The judges directed that “wherever it is possible, lockers to children may be provided”. The bench also directed that to comply with the recommendations, school time-tables may be accordingly changed. “It is not possible this term. For the next term, do it in such a way that on any given day, all subjects (books) are not carried,’’ said Justice Kanade. Directing the state to file an affidavit annexing the circular, the bench said “we hope that in four weeks’ time the circular is issued”. The panel said ideally, school bag weight should not exceed 10% of a student’s weight. In reality, it exceeds up to 20-30% of the children’s weight, and 58% students below 10 and 70-75% students below 12 experience muscle pain and stress-induced ailments.