The Supreme Court on Thursday directed all States and Union Territories to issue within three months ration cards to migrant workers who have registered themselves with the Union government's eShram portals created for their benefits.
"Being a welfare State, it is the duty of the concerned State/UT to see that the remaining registrants on eShram, who are still not registered on ration card data and who are not issued the ration cards, they are issued ration cards and the exercise for it is required to be expedited," a bench of Justices M R Shah and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said.
The court noted that out of 28.60 crore registrants on eShram 20.63 crores are registered on ration card data.
"Meaning thereby, the rest registrants on eShram are still without ration cards. Without the ration card a migrant/unorganised labourer or his family members may be deprived of the benefit of the schemes and may be the benefit under the National Food Security Act," the bench added.
The bench gave the States and Union Territories further three months’ time to undertake the exercise to issue ration cards to the left out registrants on eShram portal by giving wide publicity.
The court said, this was necessary to ensure all registrants may get the benefit of the benevolent schemes floated by the central and the state governments including under the National Food Security Act.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for activist Anjali Bharadwaj and others pointed out that approximately more than 10 crores persons are deprived of the benefit of National Food Security Act due to non issuance of the ration cards.
The Union government, in its status report, stated that against the total target of 38,37,42,394 migrants 28,86,23,993 migrants have already registered their names on eShram portal. The portal was launched on August 26, 2021 by the Ministry of Labour & Employment in technical cooperation with NIC.
eShram portal is meant to register and support the unorganised/migrant workers by providing them with a Universal Account Number (UAN).