Creating rights with gusto through new welfare acts would become mere lip service unless their financial impact was kept in mind, the Supreme Court cautioned the Centre on Wednesday.
The court’s oral remark referred to how the government promised dedicated protection officers and shelter homes for women who suffered domestic abuse but has not delivered yet.
Yet again, the government enacted the law on the right to education but did not have funds to build the sufficient number of schools or pay decent salaries to teachers working in the programme.
As a result, a three-judge Bench led by Justice U.U. Lalit said, the court was flooded with litigation.
“Revenue officials double up as ‘protection officers’ under the Domestic Violence Act when the training for these protection officers is completely different... Look at the Right to Education law, where are the schools? You have appointed people as shiksha mitra and shiksha karmi and pay them ₹5,000. They come to court seeking parity in pay. When we ask the States, they say ‘where is the money?’ So, whenever you bring in an Act, keep the financial impact in mind... When any legislation is enacted, its financial impact has to be assessed... Otherwise, all this becomes only lip-service... You create a right and the courts are left in difficulty,” Justice Lalit addressed the Centre, represented by Additional Solicitor-General Aishwarya Bhati.
The court was hearing a writ petition filed by an NGO, ‘We the Women of India’, about the lack of protection officers and shelter homes’ infrastructure in various States as promised under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence (DV) Act of 2005.
Advocate Shobha Gupta, for the NGO, said shelter homes were an essential part of the Act.
Justice S. Ravindra Bhat, who is also part of the Bench along with Justice P.S. Narasimha, said the Centre, as a nodal agency under the law, should conduct a statistical assessment of the number of protection officers and how many/the kind of infrastructure required for shelter homes in different States.
The court said the number of protection officers would vary according to the size of each State and the number of domestic abuse cases.
Justice Bhat said things would have been easier if the States had their own portal in which they could upload the statistics.
In its previous order on February 25, the court had found that in many States revenue officers or even Indian Administrative Service (IAS) were designated as protection officers under the 2005 Act.
“This clearly was not the intent of the law-makers, since such revenue or administrative officials would be unable to devote time to discharge the fairly intense work required and expected of protection officers. In some States, the number of districts and their geographical dispersion is large but the number of officers actually provided are disproportionately small compared to the geographical dispersion and vastness of the State,” the court had noted in the February 25 order.
Subsequently, the court had asked the government to provide details, by April 6, of the nature of Central programmes/plans outlining assistance to support the efforts under the DV Act by various States, including the extent of funding, conditions of governing financial support and the control mechanisms in place.
The court had wanted the Centre to collect State-wise relevant data of litigation under the DV Act with respect to the complaints made, number of courts and the relative number of protection officers; the conditions of service, training and creation of a regular cadre of protection officers; their career progression, etc.
“This court is of the opinion that these particulars are essential because the protection officers, like the magistrates who are tasked to the implementation of the enactment, have been conceived as the backbone to effectuate the law, enacted with laudable objectives, by Parliament,” the court noted.
However, on Wednesday, Ms. Bhati sought more time to compile the data and file an affidavit.
“The work is in progress... But we have to get information from the States... This information is not readily available with us,” the central law officer said.
The court gave the Centre two weeks to file a status report. It listed the case on April 26.
