"Reports On Shelters For Homeless Vague": Telangana HC Directs Greater Hyderabad's Municipal Corporation To File Comprehensive Report

The Telangana High Court on Thursday observed that reports filed by Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporatio (GHMC) on shelter homes set up during the lockdown were vague and lacked detail.

A bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy directed the civic body to file a detailed and comprehensive report by May 15 and supply a copy to the Advocate appearing for the Petitioner before the next date of hearing.

An Advocate, Mrs. S. Nanda had filed a Letter petition addressed to the Chief Justice, seeking direction to the government for elucidating details of shelter homes set up for the homeless during the Coronavirus pandemic induced lockdown.

Nanda, in her PIL had stated that there were many migrant labourers, beggars and homeless people, still living on the roads of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. They were eating, sleeping and urinating on the road and this may result in the spread of Covid, apart from being antithetical to the Constitutional duty bestowed on the State under Article 21, she stated.

"I specifically pointed out to the Court that though the four persons living to the left of saint Patrick's High School had been shifted, fact remains as on date, there are shelterless people virtually living in every street in Secunderabad" - Advocate S. Nanda told Live Law

The bench further stated that the report did not clearly mention the category of person being shifted to shelter homes, even though the needful had been done, vis-à-vis shifting them from the particular spots.

In her letter petition, Nanda had averred that,

"...Infact, the residents of the nearby apartments have even called up the Local Police .Yet they do not move out, nor the police makes any efforts to shift them to a shelter home nearby. These four people infact sleep very close to each other and they dont maintain social distancing either,and thereby increasing the threat of the spread of COVID-19 in the entire locality.It is also very important and one of the primary duties of the government to provide shelter to all the shelterless people by patrolling every lane in twin cities and to rehabilitate all of them into shelter homes thereby reducing the risk of spread of COVID-19 disease. Every street admittedly has one or more shelterless persons comfortably residing and sleeping there."

The Court also heard Professor Vishweswar Rao's PIL along with the instant plea, seeking the Court's direction to Telangana government for permitting NGOs to reach out to child care centres, shelters for women and migrant labourers with essential supplies.