Provide ration, Aadhaar card to tribals in four weeks: Madras HC
CHENNAI: The Madras High Court has ordered the state government to conduct special camps in Kalvarayan hills, spread over Kallakurichi and Salem districts, to issue Aadhaar and ration cards to the tribal community residing in the hills, within four weeks.
A division bench of justices SM Subramaniam and V Sivagnanam issued the orders on Wednesday when a suo motu writ petition initiated by the court, following the Kallakurichi hooch tragedy, came up for hearing.
The bench also asked the government to take steps to ensure the hill dwellers get adequate infrastructure, including road facilities so that emergency medical vehicles can be operated without any difficulty on the ghat section, and livelihood enhancement activities.
“The infrastructure development works shall be carried out as expeditiously as possible,” the bench said, adding that steps shall be taken to ensure availability of doctors and paramedical staff in the primary health centre and the school is equipped with enough teachers.
Meanwhile, principal chief conservator of forests Sudhanshu Gupta filed a status report enlisting the schemes implemented in the hills and steps taken to improve the livelihood of hill dwellers.
The status report, filed through additional advocate general J Ravindran, informed that the department has initiated steps to improve the social status and well being of the tribal people by implementing various welfare schemes.
The report informed that various scheme works to the tune of `10.62 crore have been carried out from 2013-14 to 2024-25 financial years. “Various schemes have been implemented in a phased manner intending to benefit the tribal people and to ensure they are not neglected,” the report stated.
Meanwhile, final arguments were advanced on behalf of the PIL petitioners seeking CBI probe into the Kallakurichi hooch tragedy before the first bench of Acting CJ D Krishnakumar and Justice PB Balaji. Advocate GS Mani argued on behalf of two petitioners advocate A Mohandoss and former MLA Dr A Sridharan. He alleged that hooch deaths were caused due to the collusion of local politicians of the ruling party, and government authorities including the police.
