Thread by @LawBeatInd

SupremeCourt hearing suo moto matter in connection to the Children in the Street situation in view of the pandemic.
#COVID19

ASG KM Nataraj informed the bench that the Calcutta Government has done a good job, whereas, the Maharashtra Government has done nothing yet.

Justice L Nageswara Rao asking the states who have not uploaded the data regarding the children on the stree.

#COVID19

Adv Sachin Patil for Maharashtra informed that our work is in progress. We have identified around 3000 children, we are making all our honest effort, whereas, the data on the portal is not real time data.
#COVID19

J Rao- see the need of the children who must be starving on the street, we cannot wait for this long,

Patil- We are not taking it as an adversarial litigation. As an officer of the Court, I'm persuing it.

#COVID19

J Rao- We appreciate that but the information should be available.

Patil- Just give us 4 weeks time.

J Rao- #COVID19 and the problem we are facing is much bigger for these children who don't have anybody to take care of them.

Adv Chirag M Shroff appearing for Delhi

Justice Rao- When we started the matter it was said that there are around 70000 children on the street and now you say only around 400.

Adv Shobha Gupta- Milords I put my statements that in this cold there are atleast 8 children that I see everyday at the red light at around 9:30 PM.

#COVID19

Senior Adv Garima Prashad appearing for Uttar Pradesh informs that in the year 2015-16 NGO identified 30000 children and we are making efforts to identify these children. All the other districts team has been sent out to take up all the children on streets and involved in begging

J Rao- You can give this work to traffic police, these children are near signals mostly. The immediate need of these children cannot wait.

Justice BV Nagarathna- Now in this time of #COVID there would be more orphan children.

J Rao- The Country is in third surge of COVID but part of this is also taking care of children, you'll have that many more children on the road.

Adv Pashupati Nath Razdan- We have started and identified the children on the streets.

J Rao- How many?

Razdan- there are 704, the numbers are not rightly coming to us

J Rao- We'll say despite repeated directions the process has not been started.

Razdan- It's not that we are ignoring the situation.

Adv Pragya Baghel appearing for Jharkhand informed the bench that we have identified 109 children.

J Rao- What did you do to these children.
Baghel - We have put them in a shelter.

#COVID19

Adv Deepanwita Priyanka appearing for Gujarat informed the bench that we have identified 1990 children.

J Rao- What did you do?

Priyanka- We have directed that whatever scheme is applicable on them are given to them.

J Nagarathna- There is also a process for adoption.
#COVID

ASG Nataraj- Without being discriminate, all the States have failed.
There are a few who didn't even attend the meeting.

J Rao- We'll ask them to join.

Adv Shobha Gupta appearing for applicant suggests WWI the court to initiate contempt action against the authority if the complaint are made to this Hon'ble court, like I visited the red light.

J Nagarathna- We don't want them to act on threat of contempt.

Gupta- Milords this is the violation of the orders of highest Court of the Country.

#COVID19

Adv Gaurav Agrawal (Amicus)- Milords there has been not even a single child who has been rehabilitated, if the child is living with parents what is the scheme for these children and for the children who are on the road and leaves at the night.
#COVID19

Nagarathna- One of the scheme in Bangalore has government buses that are converted into classrooms and the buses goes to places and the children are picked up and the teachers in the buses teaches them.

J Rao- There is such thing in Delhi also, Aurangzeb Road I think.
We'll list this matter after 3 weeks

Order- We direct all the District Magistrates to involve the SJPU, DLSA and the volunteery organization in identification of children without any further delay.

Order- The DMs are also directed to upload all the details on the Bal Swaraj portal.
In a next meeting going to be conducted by NCPCR, the issue relating to rehabilitation of children without waiting of entire procedure should be discussed without any delay.

Order- The Status report be filed within 3 weeks from today.

We direct the State Governments to instruct all the authorities, not to delay the identification and rehabilitation of children in street situations.
List the matter after 4 weeks.

#COVID19