Supreme Court Expresses Displeasure Over Centre's Approach For Community Kitchen Scheme

The Apex Court on November 16 expressed its staunch displeasure over the Centre's response on framing pan India policy to implement a community kitchen scheme and granted three weeks to hold a meeting with states and produce a comprehensive plan to approach the scheme.

According to the reports of NDTV, the top court heard a PIL seeing directions to the Centre, States and Union Territories to formulate a scheme for a community kitchen to combat hunger and malnutrition.

The court said that the Centre approach in framing the scheme was an arbitrary one. The affidavit did not have an actionable plan consisting of the information that is already available "You are extracting information. It does not say what fund you have collected and what you are doing etc. We wanted a uniform model from the Centre. You have to ask the states. Not to collect information like police," the bench had stated at the outset.

'This Is The Last Warning'

The court also irked over the filing of the affidavit by an Under Secretary of the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Administration. "This is the last warning I am going to give to the Government of India. Your Under-Secretary files this affidavit. Why cannot a secretary-level officer file the affidavit? You have to respect the institutions. We say something, and you write something. This has been told several times earlier," the CJI said.

The PIL was filed by Social Activists Anun Dhawan, Ishann Dhawan, and Kunjana Singh had also sought a direction to the Centre for creating a national food grid for those people who are falling outside the public distribution scheme. Furthermore, the plea also referred to the state-funded community kitchens which are run in Uttarakhand, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Jharkhand that serve meals in hygienic conditions at subsidized rates.

What Are Community Kitchens, And How They Can Help

A Community Kitchen is a group of people who meet regularly to plan, cook and share healthy, affordable meals. Community Kitchens Groups are for everyone and can be run anywhere there is a kitchen (churches, schools, neighbourhood houses, community health services, workplaces, Men's Sheds etc.)

The community kitchens could play a vital role in mitigating the problem of malnutrition and lowering the deaths due to hunger as these community kitchens provide healthy meals for free at prices lower than the market price. Community kitchen is already a successful plan in various other states of the country.

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