Tribune News Service
New Delhi, June 29
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed states and UTs to implement the ‘one nation, one ration card’ scheme by July 31, while asking the Centre to provide dry ration for free distribution among migrant workers till the pandemic continued.
Maintaining that right to food was included in right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution, a Bench led by Justice Ashok Bhushan said governments were duty-bound to provide food security to migrant workers exposed to financial and other hardships amid Covid.
The SC directed the Centre to allocate additional foodgrain to the states and UTs as per their demand for distribution among migrants. It also asked the Centre to set up a portal for registering migrant workers to create a national database for the scheme. “We direct the states to bring in place a scheme for distribution of dry ration to migrant labourers,” said the Bench, which also included Justice MR Shah. The SC pulled up the Labour Ministry for its “lackadaisical attitude” in dealing with the issue. “When the unorganised workers are waiting for registration to reap the benefits of welfare schemes, the apathy of the Ministry of Labour and Employment is unpardonable,” the court noted.
“The states/UTs are directed to run community kitchens at prominent places… for feeding those migrant labourers who do not have sufficient means to procure two meals a day,” it said. The Punjab Government told the court that 38 community kitchens were working in different districts of the state. Referring to the National Statistics Office data of 2017-18, the SC said there were around 38 crore workers in the unorganised sectors and providing them food security was the government’s job.
Says labour ministry’s ‘apathy’ unpardonable