Supreme Court directs govt to develop migrant workers' registration portal by July 31

This registration will help in extending various benefits of the state as well as central schemes to the migrant workers.

The court has directed the Centre to also release the necessary amount of food grains to the state governments so that the state governments can make dry rations available to the migrant workers under their own schemes.

States meanwhile have been asked to come out with the necessary scheme for ensuring at least dry rations are provided at least until this pandemic goes on.

The court also reprimanded some states which have not complied with the ‘one nation-one ration’ scheme.

The Centre had in the earlier hearing said that while most states were implementing the ONORC, four of them -- Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi and West Bengal -- had not done so and implementing it would depend on their technical readiness.

The Centre later also said the AAP government's claim regarding the launch of ONORC plan is misleading as a large number of migrant workers are unable to take the benefit of subsidised National Food Security Act (NFSA) food grains in Delhi as there is no full implementation.

The bench had taken strong note of the delay in the development of software meant to register workers of the unorganised sector to create a national database and had posed queries to the Centre as to how they benefit from free food grain till November this year under the 'Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana would reach migrant labourers having no ration cards.

Earlier on May 24, the top court had termed "very slow" the process of registration of unorganised workers and had directed authorities to provide dry ration and make operational community kitchens for migrant workers stranded throughout the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The plea for this case was filed in a pending suo motu case of 2020 in which the top court had in May last year taken cognisance of problems and miseries of migrant labourers and had passed a slew of directions, including asking states not to charge fare from migrant workers and provide them free food till they board trains or buses.