The Centre informs the Supreme Court that no state has recorded starvation fatalities
1 min read
The Supreme Court Bench requests every states to give statistics on malnutrition, hunger mortality, and other associated concerns within two weeks.
The Union governement drew a near-blank response to the Supreme Court’s inquiries on hunger fatalities on Tuesday.
The government’s answer ranged from encouraging the court to get data from the states to making broad statements about malnutrition in “poor nations” and reciting numbers from a 2015 health study conducted and a newspaper article.
The bench also condemned the government for looking at a report from 2015-2016 to declare there are no more fatalities from starvation. A three-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) N.V. Ramana, Justices A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli, and represented by Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, questioned the Centre.
The Bench opened the discussion by referring to an affidavit filed by the Centre, which said that no state has recorded starvation deaths.
The bench also asks whether we can accept that there are no fatalities from famine in the country? And if the concerned authority has any up to date report based on that? Is there a survey report that shows such fatalities still occur? The CJI asked Mr. Venugopal to provide data as earliest as possible.
