The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Monday disposed of a PIL highlighting irregularities in the grant of compensation to labour card holders in the event of their death. The Court directed the Principal Secretary Labour to ensure concrete action in this matter and set a time limit of two months to accomplish this.
The case was heard by the division bench of Chief Justice Mohammad Rafique and Justice Vijay Kumar Shukla.
During the hearing, Advocate Devendra Kumar Tripathi, appeared for PIL activist Tulsiram Patel, the former sarpanch of Gram Panchayat Ramgadha, resident of District Damoh, and Deputy Advocate General Swapnil Ganguly appeared for the state.
It was argued on behalf of the petitioner that on the death of the labourer, there has been a provision to distribute compensation to his family members. There was a lot of irregularities in this regard. Under these, many ineligible people were paid, while the actual beneficiaries were left out.
Therefore, this irregularity was reported to the Assistant Labour Commissioner, Sagar. When concrete action was missing, a fresh complaint was sent to the Labour Commissioner, Indore. He took the matter seriously and issued an inquiry directive to Assistant Labour Commissioner, Sagar in September 2019. Assistant Labour Commissioner, Sagar duly sent the report after investigation to the Labour Commissioner, Indore.
Despite this, concrete action against the culprits was awaited in case of irregularity in the compensation in death cases of labour card holders. Hence, the petitioner approached the High Court after making complaint to the Chief Minister.
After considering the entire matter, the High Court directed the Principal Secretary Labour to ensure concrete action against the culprits based on the investigation report in the case.