The Right to Food Campaign, a platform of various civil society organisations working in food and public distribution, has condemned a Gujarat district collector’s order to transfer all the ration cards from a Dalit Fair Price Shop (FPS) to another village because of an alleged social boycott by an upper caste community in Kanosan village in Patan district.
The convenors of the Campaign, Aysha and Gangaram Paikra, in a statement said that District Collector Arvind Vijayan transferred the ration cards of all 436 households in Kanosan to the FPS in Edla village last month. They said such an action is against law and urged the administration to lodge cases under Scheduled Caste and Schedule Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
Social exclusion
They said law provides for action if an individual is humiliated, abused, or for creating a feeling of enmity, hatred and animosity against a Scheduled Caste person. The convenors said social exclusion of a person, family or group of a specific caste, economic boycott, hindering their employment, business, or shop are also crimes.
“In this case the person was forced to attempt suicide, therefore, crimes of serious nature as per the IPC along with other sections mentioned above need to be applied immediately,” said the Campaign’s convenors.
They said the Dalit FPS dealer has been running the dealership for the last 30 years but for the last two years, a negative campaign started after a an upper caste leader of the village was denied ration because of the invalidity of his ration card.
Boycott of shop
“The boycott of the FPS first started when fake allegations were made about inadequate distribution with signatures of 371 people from Kanosan village and a conspiracy hatched to distribute using a POS machine belonging to a savarna FPS dealer from the neighbouring village. This put Kanti Parmar under great pressure due to which he tried to commit suicide by using poison in May 2021,” the convenors said.
The poison caused a serious injury in one of his legs and it had to be amputated. “After this, a case was filed against 5 people and they were arrested. But within a month, they were released on bail and soon a mass social boycott of the FPS run by the Dalit started. A majority of the households in the village are from the upper caste community and they stopped placing orders with him and wrote to the District Collector asking for transfer of their ration cards to Edla village. Currently, the licence of the Dalit FPS dealer is on the verge of getting cancelled,” the convenors said.
