Ensure no migrant worker stays hungry instructed by the supreme court to the government

The government is implementing one nation, so one ration card! On Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave a judgment saying, “the government can’t step down from their duties of feeding the workers who have migrated from another place just because they don’t have ration cards during the pandemic time”. 

“In the pandemic, the large number of migrant workers is a serious issue due to lack of education and the condition of poverty. Still, that doesn’t give the authority to the government to disregard giving them food only because they don’t possess a ration card that a government asks for. The government has to consider the call of pandemics where the workers have lost their jobs or are not able to seek for one to fulfill their needs by offering a helping hand to such people.” M.R Shah and Ashok Bhushan are on the bench of justices of the Supreme Court, notice in a document of judgment with 80 pages.

So by July 31, the court has set a deadline for both the states and centers to perform their duty correctly. Where one-fourth of the population of the country is formed by these workers who are 38 crores in number have significantly and equally contributed to the development and growth of the country, They must ensure that none of the migrant workers remains hungry in this pandemic,

The Supreme Court has now asked the government to make new schemes by July 31 to offer all the migrant workers dry ration.  Bhushan said, “Now both the territories of union and state have too little effort to reach the laborers in vain such that none of them is denied two meals in a day.”

The court has directed that the center provide the state with whatever additional quantity of grains they demand. The kitchen community has to be set up to feed all the workers until the pandemic ends.

Food being the intrinsic part of life to exist with dignity is considered the “bare necessities of life”. So, the states are ordered to implement the scheme that is One Nation and One Ration Card. Which offers the right to the laborers to access food at any part of the country to the fair price shop with just one ration card as the National Food Security Act covers them. 

The court criticized the Ministry of Labour for their “unpardonable apathy” to have not yet completed the project of 45.39 crores where they had to work on the national database,e which is a portal for unorganized workers were registering and identifying the unorganized laborers and migrant workers for ensuring the rights of security,  health, and welfare.

The order for opening this portal was back in 2018, and still, it wasn’t completed as the Center has blamed the software problem. Now they are asked to work on the portal by July 31. The Labour Secretary has to send a reporter by the next month saying they would finish registering the workers by December 31. Otherwise, all the schemes about welfare would remain as “Tall claims “ on all the papers.

Bhushan from the event observed that the ministry is not actively addressing the concerns of the laborers and that they disapprove of the no-action behavior of the church.

The court observed that both during the first and second wave, the workers are exposed to the hardships due to the constraints to the access of the schemes made by the union or state territories, be it financial, and that they are most vulnerable to problems of economic regression.

And suggested that the center has to redesign the beneficiaries for the rural and urban areas under the act of food security. Also adding that the union or state territories have to register licensed SE contractors and establishments under 1979, Inter-state Migrant Workmen and ensure that all the authorities have fuller details of the employed workers with them.