New Delhi, September 04: In a strong indictment of the public distribution system, the Supreme Court on Friday said PDS was virtually non-existent in the country and even if they exist the same is being used for diverting the material into the black market.
“The PDS is not working in many states. There is no PDS at all. Not a single thing is available in the PDS. The same is being diverted to the black market,” a bench of Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, Justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan observed.
The bench made the remarks while scoffing at a suggestion from senior counsel Colin Gonzalves for opening special PDS counters for thousands of closed tea estate workers in the country facing starvation.
The apex court granted four more weeks to some of the states to file their response on the steps taken to mitigate the plight of the distressed workers.
Gonzalves submitted the government should be directed to open special PDS counters for the benefit of tea garden workers who are jobless and face starvation.
He complained that despite the apex court’s earlier direction, the states, where the tea estates are located, have failed to respond to notices issued by it in August 2006 over alleged starvation deaths by workers of tea gardens illegally abandoned by companies.
The states where the tea estates have been closed over the years are Assam, Karnataka, Uttaranchal, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Tripura and Himachal Pradesh.
The Court was informed that several of the companies, which were given lease of the tea gardens, have abandoned the business without paying the dues of the workers.
The petition filed by International Union of Food, Agriculture, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco, Plantation and Allied Workers’ Association (IUF), has contended that the authorities are bound under the law to protect the interests of the workers and recover their dues.
According to the PIL, around Rs 4,000 crore was to be paid to the workers as wages for the last eight years.
The PIL has said that as a result of non-payment of earned wages, provident fund and statutory dues such as gratuity, closure and retrenchment compensation, the situation of starvation, destitution and despair has spread in the tea gardens of the country.
Elaborating on the deplorable condition of tea garden workers in various states, the petitioner in 2006 had said that in the 18 tea gardens of north Bengal alone 17,162 workers have to be paid dues of Rs 36.6 crore.
The Association said 240 starvation deaths had been reported in the states and workers were living in pathetic conditions as power supply to many of the gardens has been stopped due to non-payment of dues.
–Agencies