Allow migrant workers to return to their homes after being tested for COVID-19: PIL filed in the Supreme Court

A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court urging it to direct the Centre to allow migrant workers to return to their hometowns and villages after testing them for COVID-19 and for the authorities to provide for their safe travel back home..Migrant workers who are stranded away from home at a time when the country is gripped with a health crisis are the worst affected set of people in the present times, the petition says at the outset..Migrant workers who have had take to different desperate means in an attempt to return to their homes were all lodged in shelter homes as on March 31, the Centre had told the Supreme Court. The Centre had added that in the interest of containing the pandemic from spreading, the government wants to cease all internal migration. .However, the petition prays that these distressed migrant workers should be allowed to return home now, in light of the extension of the nation-wide lockdown until May 3. The petitioner has made the prayer invoking the fundamental rights of these workers under Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution of India..It is suggested that necessary tests be conducted and that those workers who test negative for the novel coronavirus should be allowed to return home, rather than keeping them forcefully in shelter homes, away from their own families and against their wishes. The authorities, in fact, should arrange for the safe travel for these migrant workers to their homes, the PIL adds..The large number of people gathering at bus terminuses in various cities on several occasions is a testament to the fact that the migrant workers are distressed and do not wish to be lodged in shelter homes but want to return home amid this deadly pandemic, the petitioner argues..These migrant workers are placed a very differently in comparison to those persons living at their own homes during this lockdown. Owing to the uncertain situation and circumstances, there is a bigger burden cast upon this set of people, which is a violation of their rights under Article 14, the petitioner submits. .It is also added that the restriction of their movement and their confinement in the city of their migration in a shelter home violates their rights under Article 19. The petitioner has also invoked the right to life with dignity as guaranteed under Article 21..Article 21 of the Constitution of lndia also envisages the right to live with dignity and the same is being denied to these migrant workers.PIL petitioner.In light of the second phase of the nation-wide lockdown and the circumstances in which the migrant workers find themselves, the petitioner has prayed that the authorities be directed to arrange for a large number of transport facilities to enable the safe return of stranded migrant workers without compromising on the norm of social distancing..Necessary arrangements for testing of COVID-19 can be made for all those migrant workers who wish to travel to their native places, either in the state of their departure or in the state of their arrival.the petition further adds..The petition has been filed through Advocate Prashant Bhushan and drawn by Advocates Neha Rathi and Jatin Bhardwaj..Read the Petition: