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Did a late-night letter on Monday from 20 renowned Delhi and Mumbai advocates accusing the Supreme Court of displaying signs of their emergency-time attitude helped to shift the court's reluctance to entertain PILs on the plight of migrant workers to take suo motu cognisance of the crisis and pursue response from the Center and states within 48 hours?
The letter signed by 20 advocates, including P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, C U Singh, Vikas Singh, Prashant Bhushan, Iqbal Chagla,Yusuf Muchala, Aspi Chenoy and Janak Dwarkadas, stated:
"As a result of the failure of the court to interfere (in March), even though the number of Covid cases was just a few hundred at the time, millions of migrant workers were unable to return to their hometowns and were forced to stay in small crowded tenements or rooms or on pavements, without any jobs or livelihood, and even a definite food source."
The letter, sent to the CJI on Monday at 10.34 pm by senior advocate Indira Jaising who is also a signatory, said:
"This enforced stay in cramped quarters in turn only subjected these poor employees to an increased risk of Covid infection. In addition, the argument made by the government was clearly proven to be contrary to the facts.Many estimates indicate that more than 90 per cent of migrant workers in many states did not receive government rations and suffered a dire shortage of food."
The lawyers argued that the inability of the SC to interfere at the initial stages when Covid-19 cases were in the hundreds contributed to major staff migration in May.
They said,
"Migrant labourers who had been fed up with being virtually incarcerated for the preceding six weeks, without jobs or wages, agreed that they would be better off attempting to return home. Significantly, the country's Covid infections had traversed 50,000 by this time, and Covid infected a significant number of these migrant workers as well. Even in that phase, the government initially sought to obstruct their travel/movement on foot or by trucks. Subsequently, the government agreed to their movement by bus and trains (Shramik Specials)."
"When arrangements were made for transporting them by road, they were often left at the borders of the receiving states, which at times were unable to make any further arrangements for them to allow them to enter or reach their homes or provide transportation, almost as if this were not one country with a common citizenship. Under these conditions, the right of these hapless poor millions to life , liberty and freedom of movement was made practically meaningless, "said the lawyers, who also included Sidharth Luthra, Mohan Katarki, Anand Grover, Santosh Paul, Mahalaxmi Pavani, Mihir Desai, Rajani Iyer, Rajiv Patil, Navroz Seervai, Gayatri Singh and Sanjay Singhvi."
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