The Supreme Court’s attention was drawn on Monday to the reality that an unaccounted number of children may have dropped out of school because their parents, though alive, lost their jobs or families got displaced during the COVID-19 outbreak.
So far, the court has mainly focused on identifying children orphaned or who have lost one of their parents to the pandemic.
A Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao learnt that very little was known about children who were forced to drop out of school during the COVID-19 upsurge when their families lost their sole means of sustenance. In fact, the court wondered whether children who dropped out because their parents lost their livelihood may equal, if not best, the number of children orphaned by the COVID-19 virus.
Supreme Court’s amicus curiae, advocate Gaurav Agarwal, said these children who left school to support their families had not got the attention they deserved. While authorities like the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and State governments were actively collecting data on COVID orphans, children who dropped out of school hardly get a mention for the sole reason that their parents or guardians were still alive.
Mr. Agarwal said such children also do not figure in the NCPCR’s ‘Bal Swaraj’ portal which collected data on COVID orphans. There was no information, even on the internet, about children who left school after their parents lost their jobs or the families got displaced due to migration of labour, the amicus curiae submitted.
He said the only way forward to track these children would be to have the education departments verify their details.
“Education is the fundamental right of these children... Why can’t the State come to their rescue?” Justice Rao asked. The court ordered the NCPCR to “ponder” over the issue raised by Mr. Agarwal and submit its suggestions for a way out on the next date of hearing.
The Bench asked the States and Union Territories also to respond to the issue and come up with a course of action to “ensure that dropouts due to the adverse effects of COVID would not continue”.
“Apart from children who have lost their parents to COVID, there are a large number of children in the country who had to discontinue their education due to dislocation of their parents as well as loss of livelihood of their parents,” the court told the authorities in its order.
The Bench scheduled a hearing next week.
