Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Dear Prime Minister had cited a periodical of doubtful integrity to deny starvation deaths on Orissa. He should have pressed the forensic pathologists to find out the facts but didnt. This presented before us a parliament that could be hoodwinked by the P.M. Our visitors have seen that matter elsewhere in these pages. ( For the comprehensive and exclusive report, click here)
As is now seen, even the National Human Rights Commission has come down heavily on the Government holding misgovernance to be the root cause of starvation deaths in Orissa.
Exactly as we had interpreted starvation, the NHRC has maintained that the huge majority of poor people whom the Country has neither equipped with education nor has provided with any source of income are perishing under unabated hunger and malnutrition. Prolonged malnutrition leads to slow starvation deaths, we had said, citing forensic authorities. The NHRC has concluded that starvation deaths reported from different parts of the Country, specifically from Orissa, are because of this reason alone. Holding misgovernance resulting from acts of omission and commission on the part of public servants, (Ministers including the P.M. belong to the category of public servants also) responsible for the starvation deaths, the NHRC has decreed that keeping people under condition of malnutrition is nothing but flagrant contravention of human rights.
The reading of Article 21 of the Constitution of India together with Article 39(A) and Article 47 places the issue of food security in the corr3ext perspective, thus making the right to food a guaranteed fundamental right which is enforceable by virtue of constitutional remedy provided under Article 32, it has said.
How shall the Prime Minister react?