Starvation deaths: States, UTs get time to respond

A Bench of Chief Justice Sharad A Bobde, and Justices Bhushan R Gavai and Surya Kant fumed at only three states of Jharkhand, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu filing the reply.

The Supreme Court on Monday granted another four weeks to the states and union territories to respond to allegation of the starvation deaths due to denial of ration on account of the Aadhaar linkage with the ration cards.

A Bench of Chief Justice Sharad A Bobde, and Justices Bhushan R Gavai and Surya Kant fumed at only three states of Jharkhand, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu filing the reply.

Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves contended that the Aadhaar linkage resulted in cancellation of 2.33 crore ration cards between 2013 and 2016. Referring to Prime Minister Modi’s statement that 3 crore cards were cancelled, he said 85% cards were wrongly cancelled as revealed in a recent survey.

He was appearing on behalf of Koili Devi and Gudiya Devi, the mother and sister of Santoshi, an 11-year-old girl from Simdega, Karimati in Jharkhand who died over starvation on September 28, 2017. The petition contends that her death was due to cancellation of the dalit family’s ration card since March 2017 it was not linked to their Aadhaar card making the entire family starve. The last service to Santoshi by her mother was some tea and salt.

Gonsalves also contended that in many states there is no ration at the centres when the tribals go to collect their quota and nobody to tell them when the supplies will come.