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SC notice to Centre on distribution of masks, hand sanitiser and soaps

Last Updated 01 April 2020, 14:39 IST

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Centre on a plea for "fair and equitable" distribution of masks, hand sanitiser and liquid soaps, which are being sold at inflated rates, despite the government fixing the prices for the items, necessary to fight COVID-19 pandemic.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and S Abdul Nazeer asked the Union government to respond to the PIL filed jointly by NGO 'Justice for Rights Foundation' and Amit Kumar Sharma and Prateek Sharma.

The petitioners contended that the right to life and personal liberty as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution, was "sacrosanct and it should not be made a part of a trade in hands of nefarious few".

They pointed out that the Department of Consumer Affairs, had on March 21, 2020, fixed the prices of two-ply masks at Rs 8 and three-ply at Rs 10 and that the sanitiser bottle of 200 ml at Rs 100.

However, the petitioners claimed, when they visited some chemists and medical outlets in Delhi, they found, much to their dismay, that they were denied sale of the masks on the ground that prices set by the government were too low.

The petitioners pointed out the Ministry of Chemical and Fertilizers' Department of Pharmaceuticals through National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority passed an order on March 13 directing all the authorities to ensure sufficient availability of surgical masks, hand sanitisers and gloves at the printed MRP.

The WHO had on January 30 declared the COVID-19 firstly as “public-health emergency of international concern” and then on March 11 called it pandemic, due to the ever increasing number of cases and the deaths caused by the said infectious disease.

With this, the citizens were advised to take two important steps to cover ones’ face and also to wash hands regularly with soaps and use sanitisers.

In such a scenario of widespread infection and the growing number of cases, the petitioners said effective and precautionary steps were required to ensure availability of masks, hand sanitiser and soaps as "the life and the well-being of the citizens cannot be allowed to hang in balance".

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(Published 01 April 2020, 14:39 IST)

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