-Press statement issued by Harsh Mander, Anjali Bhardwaj and Jagdeep Chhokar dated 24th May 2021 We welcome the important directions given by the Supreme Court today for ensuring food security of migrant workers across the country. The SC has directed that dry ration has to be distributed to migrant workers throughout the country by the States under the Atma Nirbhar Scheme or any other scheme found suitable by the States/Centre. Further,...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-Hindustan Times Earlier this week, the ministry released a user manual for online submission of an undertaking on no increase in pollution load due to expansion, on its Parivesh website. The environment ministry has allowed companies operating in several industries, including some polluting ones, to expand capacities on the basis of a self-certification that this will not “increase the pollution load”, creating the room for potential misdeclaration (and misuse), especially in light...

-TheWire.in A three to six-month fiscal plan has to be chalked out to make vaccines and drugs available to people of all ages across the states by bringing in the private sector. An income support scheme has to be rolled out for nine months at least. India reported a new high of 2 lakh fresh coronavirus positive cases for the first time last week, and the last few days continue to see...