Activists urge Supreme Court judges to act on plight of migrant workers

By LE Desk

New Delhi, May 11: Many activists have written to the Chief Justice of India and other judges of the Supreme Court seeking an urgent listing of the intervention in the suo motu petition regarding migrant workers. The intervention sought food security, cash transfers and appropriate travel arrangements for migrant workers during the second phase of the pandemic as state governments were resorting to lockdowns.

The letter by petitioners Harsh Mander, Anjali Bhardwaj and Jagdeep Chhokar said, “We have made several requests for mentioning our urgency application through our advocate, Prashant Bhushan. We have been informed that the application is under process. While speaking to officials in the registry we were informed that the petition will not be listed before July. We are writing to you in this manner to underline how urgent it is for this matter to kindly be heard without any delay, so that the government is directed to take all the steps necessary to help mitigate the on-going humanitarian crisis during the second wave of the pandemic”, The New indian Express reported.

“Today, we write to you because the country is again in the grip of an immense humanitarian crisis of healthcare crisis of healthcare access, oxygen, vaccines, medicines, ambulance and hearse service. But while it has hit badly the middle classes, it is sometimes forgotten that it hits much, much harder the working poor, for many reason, prominent among which are their ongoing crisis of hunger and job losses during the lockdown and the pandemic,” they wrote in the letter. The lockdowns have disrupted the slow revival of the economy, they added.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2021/may/11/activists-urge-supreme-court-judges-to-look-after-migrants-2301096.html