NEW DELHI: A decade has passed since the tabling of an annual report of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) in Parliament, thanks to the government’s apathy.
The last time an annual report of the commission, formed in 1994 to look into the issues faced by scavengers, reached the House was in 2001.
The reports cannot go public without being discussed in Parliament and thus the non-tabling amounted to denial of right to information on how a certain section of the society had been faring all these years.
In a bid to throw light on the fate of NCSK reports, Supreme Court advocate and rights activist Radhakanta Tripathy has now sent legal notices to the Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Cabinet Secretary.
In his notice, Tripathy said the NCSK was established under the provisions of the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis Act, 1993.
In accordance with Section 12 of the NCSK Act, the government should place the NCSK annual reports before each House of Parliament and take decisions over the panel’s recommendations. These recommendations, originally made by the statutory body for Safai Karamcharis, always went in vain when no action was initiated over such recommendations.