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The Supreme Court on Monday has directed the District Magistrates to involve the Special Juvenile Police Units, District Legal Service Authority, and the volunteer organization in the identification of children in the street situations without any further delay.

A bench of Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice BV Nagarathna said, "see the need of the children who must be starving on the street, we cannot wait for this long, due to the Covid, the problem that we are facing is much bigger for these children who don't have anybody to take care of them."

The bench was hearing the suo-motu cognizance taken by the apex court in regards to the children who are in street situations and who have lost their parents to Covid- 19.

Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj informed the bench that the Calcutta Government has done a good job, whereas, the Maharashtra Government has done nothing yet.

In response to this, Advocate Sachin Patil appearing for Maharashtra Government submitted that their work is in progress. "We have identified around 3000 children, we are making all our honest effort, whereas, the data on the portal is not real-time data," Patil added.

Advocate Shobha Gupta applicant in the plea submitted that "I put my statements that in this chilling cold there are at least 8 children that I see every day at the red light at around 9:30 PM." Gupta further added that the Government says that there are no children on the street at the night.

In addition to this, Senior Advocate Garima Prashad appearing for the Uttar Pradesh Government submitted that in the year 2015-16 NGOs identified 30000 children and the Government is making efforts to identify these children. All the other districts team has been sent out to take up all the children on the streets and involved in begging.

However, Justice Rao suggested the states to give this work to traffic police, "these children are near signals mostly. The immediate need of these children cannot wait," Justice Rao added.

ASG Nataraj further submitted that "without being discriminate, all the States have failed. There are a few who didn't even attend the meeting."

Amicus Curie Gaurav Agarwal pointed out before the bench that "there has been not even a single child who has been rehabilitated if the child is living with parents what is the scheme for these children and for the children who are on the road and leaves at the night." Agarwal requested the bench to direct the States to seek instructions over the issue.

In this regard, the bench noted in its order, "In a next meeting going to be conducted by NCPCR, the issue relating to rehabilitation of children without waiting of entire procedure should be discussed without any delay."

The bench further directed the State Governments to instruct all the authorities, not to delay the identification and rehabilitation of children in street situations. and listed the matter for further hearing after 4 weeks.

Case Title: IN RE CHILDREN IN STREET SITUATION