Nearly 17,000 children have died due to malnutrition in the period 2015-2016 in Maharashtra, the Bombay High Court was told on Wednesday.
A division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice Swapna Joshi was told that Right to Information queries have revealed that 283 children have died in Melghat, and around 17,000 of them in the entire State, due to malnutrition in the period.
Advocate Neha Bhide, who was appearing for the State, provided minutes of the meeting of the core committee comprising five principal secretaries and chaired by the chief secretary, to monitor the issues faced by tribals and implementation of welfare schemes in the areas. The court said the numbers are “shocking and disturbing” and that immediate steps should be taken to tackle the issue.
The bench was hearing a bunch of public interest litigations on the increase in malnutrition cases in interior Maharashtra. The court has asked Ms. Bhide to provide numbers on the budgetary allocation made by the State and Union health departments towards the development of tribals and children, and adjourned the matter to October 15.
Earlier, the court had looked into a report by the State Women and Child Development Department that shows that in Melghat, 500 children on an average die every year, against its population of three lakh. In 2013-14, the number of child deaths rose to 600 and in 2014-15, another 426 children died in just two blocks of the district.
