A plea was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday seeking a direction to all the District Magistrates (DMs) across the country to conduct daily inspection of shelter homes for migrant labourers who had left the cities for their natives places following the nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The application said the Centre should direct the DMs to ensure that sufficient food, drinking water, medical aid and proper counselling is provided to migrant labourers in these shelter homes till the lockdown, which has been extended till May 3, continues.
It has said that the Centre should direct all the states "to not permit any mass migration of any migrant labourers to their native villages situated within or outside the state, till the present lockdown continues".
Advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava has filed the application in his pending petition before the apex court in which he has raised the issue of large scale migration of daily wagers and labourers amid the lockdown.
Srivastava said the Centre should direct all the DMs to immediately identify moving or stranded migrant workers in their districts and shift them to the nearest shelter homes, where they should be provided sufficient food, water, medicines and counselling during the lockdown.
The top court had on March 31 directed the Centre to ensure that migrant workers, who are kept in shelter homes across the country, are given adequate facilities like food, medical aid and assistance of trained counsellors and religious leaders of all faiths be taken to help them overcome their panic.
The fresh application, while referring to media reports, has alleged that few state governments are not ensuring strict compliance of the March 31 order of the apex court as well as the directives of the Union Home Ministry.
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It said that allowing any mass migration of labourers to their native places situated within or outside the state would defeat the purpose of lockdown.
"If the said migrant labourers are sent to their native villages without proper COVID-19 testing, then it will be much more dangerous, as the said migrant labourers may carry the coronavirus to their native villages/rural areas, which may give rise to uncontrollable and exponential rise in COVID-19 cases," the application said.
It said that in rural India, the doctor-population ratio is far lower than what has been mandated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and thus, it is not advisable to send migrant labourers to their native villages till the lockdown continues.