The Supreme Court on March 19 took exception to the delays in the implementation of its April 2023 order to provide ration cards to about eight crore migrant workers registered in the eShram portal but not covered under the National Food Security Act.
The portal has 28.6 crore registrants. Of this, 20.63 crore find place in ration card data.
A Bench led by Justice Hima Kohli directed States and Union Territories to provide ration cards to the remaining eight crore migrant and unorganised sector workers registered on the eShram portal in two months.
The court was acting on the arguments raised by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Cheryl D’Souza for activists Anjali Bhardwaj, Harsh Mander and Jagdeep Chhokar.
Mr. Bhushan had argued that there could be more than 10 crore workers left outside the protective umbrella of the Food Safety Act as the statistics were based on the 2011 census. The population would have increased since then.
The court had said last year that it was the duty of a welfare state to include each and every migrant worker on the ration card roll expeditiously.
