COVID-19: Plea in SC for setting up of temporary community kitchens in all States

A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking direction to the Centre, all state governments and Union Territories (UTs) for setting up of pan-India temporary community kitchens at the Block-level during the COVID-19 pandemic to check starvation deaths.

The application has been filed in the already pending plea filed by social activists Anun Dhawan, Ishann Dhawan and Kunjana Singh, in which they have sought setting up of community kitchen across the country to check starvation and malnutrition.

The fresh plea filed through advocates Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi and Ashima Mandla referred to the state-funded community kitchens being run in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Jharkhand and Delhi that serve meals at subsidised rates in hygienic conditions.

It said that the personnel employed in these community kitchens provide employment, which is an added advantage in this economy where even joblessness is rampantly on the rise, adding to the cycle of hunger and malnutrition.

The present application has been moved by the applicants with the objective to seek the intervention of this Court by directing pan-India establishment of temporary' community kitchens as an effort to contain the parallel extraordinary food crises due to economic shutdown. It is imperative to imbibe the magnitude and extent of the present food crises as being unprecedented, extraordinary and indefinite and thereby impinging upon the fundamental right of Right to Food under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the plea said.

It added that the present pandemic has proved to be fatal for a percentage of persons contracting the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the unprecedented economic disruptions as a consequence of the pandemic may result increased food insecurity and rise in the number of hunger-related crises and deaths.

That nearly 19 crore persons in our country are forced to sleep on an empty stomach even in what we may refer as the normal times' and now with the lockdown to contain COVID-19, hunger threatens even a larger population of persons for whom buying food is outside their budgetary capacity. To an extent, the fear of lack of food for basic sustenance drove the migrant workers to risk their lives and potentially that of others, in an attempt to travel to their hometowns, the plea said.

The petition said that it was reported that as of April 13, an estimated 195 human lives were lost due to the ongoing lockdown in the country, of which a reported 53 deaths owed to exhaustion, hunger, denial of medical care, or suicides due to lack of food or livelihood.

During the hearing of main PIL, the top court had on February 17, had imposed additional costs of Rupees five lakhs on six states for repeatedly failing to file their reply on setting up of community kitchens within their respect.ive jurisdictions.

These states include Maharashtra, Odisha, Goa, Sikkim, Delhi and Union Territory of Ladakh. It had rejected the request of States and UTs for waiving of costs imposed on them except for Kerala.

The top court had on February 10 said that five states -- Punjab, Nagaland, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand -- and UTs of Andaman and Nicobar and Jammu and Kashmir, who have filed their responses on the PIL will not pay any fine.

The apex court had on October 18, last year favoured setting up of community kitchens, saying the country needs this kind of system to tackle the problem of hunger.

It had issued notices to the Centre and all states seeking their responses on a PIL seeking directions to all the states and UTs to formulate a scheme for community kitchens to combat hunger and malnutrition.

The plea had claimed that many children under the age of five die every day due to hunger and malnutrition and this condition was violative of various fundamental rights, including the right to food and life of citizens.