Centre complains to Supreme Court on starvation deaths data
While the government had devised a policy, not a single state provided statistics
The Supreme Court has asked the Central government to work in conjunction with the states to provide data on starvation deaths, hunger and malnutrition across the country.
A bench of Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli called for the same while hearing a petition seeking directions to the Centre, states and Union Territories to formulate a scheme for community kitchens to combat hunger and malnutrition.
Appearing for the Centre, Attorney General K K Venugopal informed the bench that not a single state had provided data to the Centre on starvation deaths despite the fact that the latter had devised a policy, which was placed on affidavit.
To this CJI Ramana questioned, “So, there are no starvation deaths in the country?”
The AG cited a recent case where a five-year-old child in Tamil Nadu was suspected to have died due to starvation, as no food was found in his intestines.
The CJI pointed, “The National Family Health Survey (2010-2013) report published by the Centre says the cause of death due to malnutrition is 25 per cent for males and 30 per cent for females. Why can you not produce before us some report by the government? Is there any survey report indicating the position of starvation death?”
We are not starving, or people are dying of hunger. Our focus is that people should not suffer from hunger, the bench observed.
The court informed it was not framing a scheme and would wait for the Centre to provide data on starvation deaths. It highlighted that states like Odisha, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Punjab and West Bengal ran community kitchens, but were dependent on the Centre for funds.
On AG’s submission that the Centre had introduced 130 schemes to combat hunger issues in which lakhs of crores were spent, the CJI retorted, “The government cannot take this as adversarial litigation. You must have a practical approach like the NGO’s Hare Ram Hare Krishna and Akshayapatra Foundation.”
The bench insisted that states had to sort out the starvation issue and each panchayat was supposed to implement the process, after which the Centre would provide funds.
Justice Kohli questioned, “How can we rely on five-year-old data? Are you making a statement that there are no starvation deaths in the country now?”
The AG replied that malnutrition existed and the Centre was not disputing it. The only question was about funding. “We can frame a scheme to provide two percent additional food grains to the states. Let them provide the data on community kitchens and who will supervise those,” he suggested.
The judge advised that a combined affidavit containing the data provided by the states to the Centre should be filed.
The matter would be taken up after two weeks, by which time the states are required to file additional affidavits disclosing the data on malnutrition, hunger and related issues.