Key points:
- The Supreme Court Wednesday asked the Centre and some states to respond to a plea.
- The plea has sought direction to repeal the provisions criminalising begging saying it leaves people with “unreasonable choice” of committing crime or starving.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to examine a plea for decriminalising begging which has been made an offence in various states under Prevention of Begging Act.
A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and R Subhash Reddy issued notice to Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar and Maharashtra where begging is an offence. The Court granted six weeks time to file their response on a PIL.
Advocate H K Chaturvedi contended with the Delhi High Court in 2018 quashed the legal provisions that criminalised begging and pleaded the court to decide it once and for all so that begging is decriminalised across the country.
“The provisions of the statutes criminalizing the act of begging puts people in a situation to make an unreasonable choice between committing a crime or not committing one and starving, which goes against the very spirit of the Constitution and violates Article 21 i.e. Right to Life,” the petition said.
“Furthermore, by enforcing such legislations, state is simply failing in its duty to provide a decent life to its citizens and adds insult to injury by arresting, detaining and, if necessary, imprisoning such persons, who beg, in search for essentials of bare survival, which is even below sustenance. A person who is compelled to beg cannot be faulted for his actions in such compelling circumstances,” the petition said.
The Delhi High Court while decriminalising begging in the state had said that the governemnt is bound to provide a decent life to its citizens and detaining and imprisoning those who beg in search for essentials of bare survival amounts to adding insult to injury.
“Begging is a symptom of a disease, of the fact that the person has fallen through the socially created net. The government has the mandate to provide social security for everyone, to ensure that all citizens have basic facilities, and the presence of beggars is evidence that that the state has not managed to provide these to all its citizens,” it had said.
