NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to examine a plea for decriminalising begging which has been made an offence in various states under the Prevention of Begging Act. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and R Subhash Reddy issued notice to Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar and Maharashtra where begging is an offence.
The court granted the states six weeks to file their response. Advocate H K Chaturvedi argued that Delhi HC had quashed the legal provisions that criminalised begging in 2018 and urged the court to decide it once and for all so that begging was decriminalised. “The provisions of the statutes criminalising the act of begging put people in a situation to make an unreasonable choice between committing a crime or not committing one and starving, which goes against the very spirit of the Constitution and violates Article 21, right to life,” the petitioner said.
“Furthermore, by enforcing such legislations, the state is simply failing in its duty to provide a decent life to its citizens and adds insult to injury by arresting such persons, who beg in search of essentials of bare survival, which is even below sustenance. A person who is compelled to beg cannot be faulted for his actions in such compelling circumstances,” it added.