Kathputli colony: PIL for basic amenities to women, kids

New Delhi: A PIL has been filed in the Delhi high court seeking basic amenities and warm clothes for pregnant and lactating women, babies and children living on the debris of the demolished Kathputli Colony, claiming that a newborn died there due to lack of post-natal care.

A bench of acting chief justice Gita Mittal and justice C. Hari Shankar asked the petitioner’s lawyer as to where the basic amenities, including sanitation, would come from if the people set up residence on a footpath.

Advocate Pallavi Sharma, representing the petitioner, said the people on whose behalf the PIL has been filed were held ineligible to be relocated by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the high court had prohibited the authorities from removing them from the west Delhi colony.

The bench said it had allowed only those people to remain at the colony who had to file an appeal against the authority’s decision holding them ineligible for rehabilitation.

The high court also issued a notice to the Delhi government and its departments of health, women and child development and the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, seeking their replies by February 20 next year to the issues raised in the petition.

Sharma said the PIL on behalf of pregnant and lactating women, newborn babies and kids up to six years of age seeks temporary relief, especially during winter months.

The PIL filed by a 46-year-old woman, who resides in the colony, has sought accessibility and availability of health case, nutritious food, sanitation facility, blankets and warm clothing for the pregnant and lactating women, newborn babies and kids up to the age of six years living in the demolished colony.

The PIL also claimed that the living conditions in the colony are quite bad and the women and children have no access to clean and hygienic sanitary facilities forcing them to defecate in the open.