The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Central government to prepare a model plan on running community kitchens and to provide data on malnutrition and other related issues.
The three-judge Bench of Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, Justice A.S. Bopanna and Justice Hima Kohli heard the petition which sought the establishing of community kitchens across the country to combat prevalent hunger, malnutrition and starvation and prevent death of persons resulting thereof.
The petitioner’s counsel, Ashima Mandla, urged the Apex Court to set up an expert committee in the matter to formulate schemes for community kitchens across the country.
To this, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal submitted that there is a media report that a child died of starvation. The Government of India (GOI) is spending a huge amount of money.
The CJI observed that the National Family Health Survey report the petitioner has filed, published by GOI. The cause of death statistics says that communicable paternal, maternal & malnutrition statistics is 25.7 % for male & 30% for female.
It was noted by the CJI that the report indicated that malnutrition was also a cause of death. “Of course, this is an old report. Why don’t you place before us, if there’s any survey report by GOI indicating what’s the position, if there’s any starvation deaths or not?” asked the CJI.
The CJI said they are not going to make any plan today or are instructing the Government to plan. If the government has any new survey report which has some data on starvation deaths, then give it to the Court.
The CJI further said that on this matter that many states say they are running community kitchens. Some states have expressed no interest in this. The states say that if this is to be implemented, then the Central government should provide us money for this.
The Chief Justice told the AG that the Centre can explore the possibility of providing additional food grains to the state governments and they can take care of logistics.
The AG agreed and said then we can make a plan in which 2 percent additional food grains will be made available to the states. For this, the states should be informed by filing an affidavit whether 2% additional food grains are acceptable to all the states.
However, the court said that we cannot give any such direction, the Central government will have to do it themselves because the states have already given suggestions.
The CJI remarked that the bench’s aim was that everyone should be able to satisfy their hunger. “Everyone knows that this is the problem, you all should take a humane approach on this subject,” observed the CJI.
“I think that if the Centre is willing to give additional food grains, then the states will support. We do not wish to comment. It is election time, the government is giving many welfare schemes,” said the CJI.
The matter will be heard in the court after 3 weeks. The Top Court granted liberty to the State Governments to file affidavits on issues of malnutrition, starvation deaths etc if they want to and also make suggestions for the same.