PIL on community kitchens: SC slaps additional cost of Rs five lakh on six states

Irked over repeated failures of the states to file their replies on setting up of community kitchens across the country, the Supreme Court on Monday imposed an additional cost of Rs five lakh each on six of them for not complying with its directions to file their affidavits on a PIL. Besides the cost imposed on February 10 for non-compliance of court orders, a bench of Justices N V Ramana, Ajay Rastogi and V Ramasubramanian imposed additional cost of Rs five lakh each on Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Orissa, Goa and Delhi. The states have been directed to file their counter affidavits within one week.

The top court also rejected the request of several states, except Kerala, for a cost waiver. The bench asked Attorney General K K Venugopal to file an affidavit on behalf of the Centre including responses of various ministries impleaded as parties in the PIL. Advocate Ashima Mandla, appearing for the petitioner, has been asked by the bench to prepare a chart of all the states who have filed their replies to the PIL. The bench posted the matter for hearing on April 8. The top court had on February 10 said that five states -- Punjab, Nagaland, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand -- and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar and Jammu and Kashmir, who have filed their responses on the PIL by Anun Dhawan, will not pay any fine.

Mandla had told the court that five months had passed since the apex court issued notice and except for five states and one union territory, no other states and UTs have filed their response. She had said 69 per cent of children under the age of five have lost their lives due to malnutrition and it is high time that states take steps to set up community kitchens. The apex court had on October 18 favoured setting up of community kitchens, saying the country needs this kind of system to tackle the problem of hunger. It had issued notices to the Centre and all states seeking their responses on a PIL seeking directions to all the states and union territories (UTs) to formulate a scheme for community kitchens to combat hunger and malnutrition.

The plea had claimed that many children under the age of five die every day due to hunger and malnutrition and this condition was violative of various fundamental rights, including the right to food and life of citizens. The PIL, filed by social activists Anun Dhawan, Ishann Dhawan and Kunjana Singh, had also sought a direction to the Centre for creating a national food grid for people falling outside the purview of the public distribution scheme. It had also sought issuance of an order to the National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) for formulating a scheme to mitigate hunger-related deaths. The plea referred to the state-funded community kitchens being run in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Jharkhand and Delhi that serve meals at subsidised rates in hygienic conditions.

The plea also referred to the concepts of soup kitchen, meal centre, food kitchen or community kitchen in other countries where food is offered to the hungry usually for free or sometimes at below-market price rates. The petition, filed through advocates Ashima Mandla and Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, had said that the Centre and its various ministries have initiated and implemented various schemes to combat hunger, malnutrition and the resulting starvation, although in reality, effective implementation of the schemes was "unclear and fairly limited". The statistics on starvation deaths in the country are unavailable and starvation as the cause of death can only be ascertained upon autopsy after death, the plea said, adding that global agencies report that more than three lakh children die every year in India because of hunger, whereas 38 per cent below the age of five are stunted.

"Community kitchens funded by state or in association with corporate social responsibility by a public-private partnership (PPP) may be implemented to complement the existing schemes," it said.