Why not convert vacant govt buildings into night shelters, SC asks Centre

NEW DELHI: As the Centre and state governments have failed to construct night shelters for about 17.73 lakh urban homeless people, the Supreme Court on Thursday asked them to consider converting vacant government houses into night shelters.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that it was the best way to provide a roof over the head of the homeless people as the government would not have to spend money on construction of night shelters and asked the Centre to consider the proposal.

Agreeing with SC's proposal, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh governments said that they had already identified several government buildings which could be used as shelter homes.

As per 2011 census, there are 17.73 lakh homeless people in the country and around 10 lakh in urban areas. 65.3% of homeless people live in five states - UP, Maharastra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. 146 out of every 100,000 people in India are homeless - 100 for every 100,000 people in rural India and 249 for every 100,000 in urban India. The Centre had launched National Urban Livelihoods Mission in 2013 with a laudable objective to provide shelter to homeless people in urban areas and over the years more than Rs 2000 crore were allocated but the homeless continue to languish on streets with no roof over their head.

Expressing concern over the state's apathy towards the homeless, the court has decided to appoint committee in each state and UT to monitor construction of shelter homes. Complying with its direction, 13 states recommended names of persons for the committees. Centre told the bench that 16 states were yet to suggest names and sought four weeks time to finalise the names of persons.

The apex court earlier appointed a committee headed by a former Delhi high court judge to examine the status of night shelters in states and projected a very grim picture for urban homeless people saying that more than 90 percent of them have no roof over their heads.

The three member committee headed by Justice (retd) Kailash Gambhir submitted its report before the apex court on the state of affairs of shelter homes in different states and said that governments were not using the funds released by the Centre for construction of shelter homes and homeless people in urban centres were forced to live in roadside, railway platforms and under flyovers. It said that only Delhi and Mizorum have done fairly well in providing shelter to the homeless and the rest of the states have failed miserably to implement NULM scheme.

As per the report, Delhi provides shelter to the largest number of homeless people in the country and in Mizorum the capacity of shelter homes outnumbers the homeless people in the state. UP, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat are worst performer.