‘WHY SHOULD WE INTERFERE IN SCHEME TO BENEFIT PUBLIC?’

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court (HC) on Monday sought to know from a petitioner who has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) against a government circular permitting only ‘fully vaccinated’ persons to travel on local trains and visit malls and workplaces whether the HC could interfere in a public scheme in which more than 75% of the population has participated. The HC held that as vaccination is a sort of weapon to fight Covid which minimises the chances of getting hospitalised, how can it be expected to interfere. The court asked the petitioner to respond within a week’s time.

A division bench of chief justice Dipankar Datta and justice Makarand Karnik, while hearing the PIL filed by activists Feroz Mithiborewala and Yohan Tengra, was informed by advocate Nilesh Ojha for Tengra that the circular issued by the state government in August 2021 violated citizens’ fundamental right to equality by discriminating between vaccinated and non-vaccinated persons and therefore the circular should be set aside and directions should be issued to the authorities to permit non-vaccinated persons to travel on local trains and visit malls and workplaces.

Last month, chief secretary of state Debashish Chakrabarty said that the state had acted on reasonable restriction under parens patriae (power to protect persons who are unable to act on their own).

The bench however said, “The state government says it has the responsibility of looking after the entire population of Maharashtra and it has to devise a policy to protect the majority of the population from Covid-19.”