Principal District and Sessions Judge and Chairperson of DLSA A. Hari Haranath Sarma assured to take up with higher authorities the issues faced by homeless people in the city, and said legal assistance would be sought from the State Legal Services and the High Court through a PIL if the need arose.
Justice Sarma was addressing homeless people at a shelter home being run by AUTD and GVMC, here on Thursday. He said he would speak to the authorities concerned for providing insurance cover to the homeless. Earlier, he distributed Aadhaar cards to the homeless people at the shelter.
According to Pragada Vasu of AUTD, the homeless people were not getting vaccinated as most of them did not possess an Aadhaar card.
This was brought to the notice of the judge by the secretary of DLSA K.K.V. Bullikrishna. Justice Sarma immediately responded to the issue and got a special camp organised by the District Aadhaar Kendra after which cards were distributed, he said.
The district judge was appalled to know that the city has only eight shelter homes. As per the Supreme Court guidelines, there should be one shelter home for every one lakh population.
In 2015, eight shelter homes were established when the population was about 15 lakh and today, we have the same number of shelter homes but the population has doubled, Mr. Vasu said.
According to Mr. Vasu, in 2017, a joint survey was conducted with GVMC and 1,300 homeless people were identified only from the core city area. Today, this number has crossed the 3,000-mark and we have provisions to accommodate only 300 at the eight shelter homes. The rest are living under flyovers and at public places, he said.
Mr. Vasu informed Justice Sarma that due to lack of shelter homes, the homeless people are becoming drug addicts and in recent times, three such people have died due to drinking cheap sanitizer liquid. He also pointed out that the shelter homes were yet to receive the honorarium of ₹6.24 lakh per annum for operation and maintenance this year. Responding to the issues, Justice Sarma said that he would speak to the authorities concerned and initiate steps.
Mr. Bullikrishna, senior advocate Lakshmi Rambabu and Aadhaar Kendra manager Srihari were present.
