New delhi sources stated that Centre on tuesday filed a status report in the supreme court saying that basic amenties are being provided to over 22, 88,000 people which includes the needy, migrant and daily wage workers. The bench headed by Chief Justice Of india S A Bobde and also comprising Justice L Nageshwar Rao was looking into the petition filed by advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava who sought directions to provide food, water and shelter to the lakhs of people who were stranded amid the nationwide lockdown. The bench heard the petition through video conferencing.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appears for Centre, filed the detailed report and said according to the last census there were about 4.14 crore people in india who have undertaken in-migration. The CJI also directed to set up an expert committee within 24 hours so as to deal with the crisis that has emerged out of the lockdown. Mehta said "Now the migration is happening due to corona fears. When the entire country was required to be locked, it was so that people don't mix and can't meet. We are trying to ensure that no migration is permissible".
He added that migration could be risky and added that so far rural india has so far not been affected by Covid 19. The SG also said that that information regarding the new virus came on january 5, 2020 and that Centre started taking up steps from january 17. He added "So far, we have been able to contain the spread of the virus much to our satisfaction. We took necessary and effective steps much ahead of many other countries. We started thermal screening at airports, seaports before cases were detected in India".
