Principal District and Sessions Judge and DLSA President A Hari Harnath Sarma assured to take up the issues faced by the homeless people in the city with the higher authorities, and asked the State Legal Services and the High Court through a PIL. Help will be sought. If needed.
Justice Sarma was addressing the homeless people at the shelter home run by AUTD and GVMC here on Thursday. He said that he would talk to the concerned authorities to provide insurance cover to the homeless. Earlier, he distributed Aadhar cards to the homeless people in the shelter home.
According to Pragada Vasu of AUTD, homeless people were not getting vaccinated as most of them did not have Aadhar card.
This was brought to the notice of the judge by DLSA secretary KKV Bullikrishna. He said that Justice Sarma immediately reacted to the issue and a special camp was organized by the District Aadhaar Center after which the cards were distributed.
The district judge was shocked to learn that there are only eight shelter homes in the city. As per the Supreme Court guidelines, there should be one shelter home for every one lakh population.
In 2015, eight shelter homes were set up when the population was around 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 the GVMC and 1,300 homeless people were identified from the core city area only. Today, the number has crossed the 3,000 mark and we have a provision to accommodate only 300 in eight shelter homes. The rest are living under flyovers and in public places.
Mr Vasu told Justice Sarma that the lack of shelter homes is causing homeless people to become addicted to drugs and three such people have died in the recent past from drinking cheap sanitiser liquids. He also informed that the shelter homes are yet to receive an honorarium of ₹ 6.24 lakh per annum for operation and maintenance this year. Responding to the issues, Justice Sarma said that he will talk to the concerned authorities and take steps.
Shri Bullikrishna, Senior Advocate Lakshmi Rambabu and Aadhar Center Manager Shrihari were present.
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