COVID-19 crisis: Centre asks SC to discourage self serving pleas

The Centre on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court not to encourage "self-serving petitions" filed on the basis of newspaper reports, when "pro-active and pre-emptive steps" were being taken to come out of the unprecedented global crisis due to Covid-19 pandemic.

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Responding to a PIL by activists Harsh Mander and Anjali Bharadwaj, the Union government, in an affidavit, said the petitioners, in "complete and blissful ignorance of a huge exercise going on by the central as well as the state Governments in cooperation with each other, resorted to merely giving vague assertions and piecemeal suggestions without any factual foundation".

Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths

The petitioners led by advocate Prashant Bhushan sought a direction for payment of wages to the migrant workers across the country.

The Centre, for its part, submitted as many as 22,567 relief camps have been set by state governments, housing 631119 workers. As many as 405908 workers were kept at 3909 relief camps set up by the NGOs. It also pointed out 5415458 workers were given food by the government, 3011051 by NGOs and 1505107 by their employers.

A bench presided over by Chief Justice S A Bobde said we can't have better wisdom than the government in these matters. "We can't take better decisions than the government at this stage," the bench said and posted the matter for further hearing on April 13.

In its written response, the Centre maintained that the central and all state governments were doing their best strategising all human resources and other resources.

"When the country is facing such unprecedented crisis, filing of such petitions and attempting to sit in appeal over all actions taken by the respective governments by few individual needs to be discouraged as it diverts energy and attention of the statutory functionaries which ought to have been utilised to its optimum in discharging their duties on ground," it said.