In a bid to remove confusion over the alleged hunger deaths in the State, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Saryu Roy has directed to form a committee, involving activists working in the field of Right to Food along with different departments related to it, so that a protocol is prepared to decide the actual reason for death of an individual.
The directive was issued in the light of the claims made by the Right to Food activists, in some of the recent deaths, saying that they were caused due to hunger while the district administration rejected their claims calling illness a reason behind it.
“I have asked the concerned Secretary to prepare a protocol involving members from all the stakeholders related to it, so that the confusion over alleged hunger deaths could be removed once and for all,” said the Minister.
Besides the Food and Supply Department, members from other departments like health, education, social welfare and Right to Food activists should also be involved so that no controversy remains on the issue, he added.
“The Committee will have at least 4-5 members which will look into the socio-economic status on the alleged hunger death by checking on the nutrition level of the family as a whole and individually along with other factors to remove controversy on it,” said Roy.
A standardisation must be done in this regard as claims are made by different bodies that the death was caused due to hunger which is really unfortunate for a welfare state as so much money was being invested in the public distribution system, he added. No such initiative has been done so far by any of the states in the country, and Jharkhand will be the first to take a foot forward in this regard, he added.
Remarkably, around half a dozen of people allegedly died in the last four months across Jharkhand after having been denied ration from their PDS dealers for failing to verify themselves with Aadhaar.
Recently, lakhi Murmu (30) of Dhowadnagal village under Hiranpur block of Pakur died on January 24 after she was denied food grains under PDS scheme for the past four months resulting in her starvation death. Earlier also, 11-year old Santoshi Kumari, a dalit girl from Karimati village in Simdega died of starvation after her family’s ration card was cancelled for not being linked to their Aadhaar number.
Government officials, however, denied allegations that starvation caused the deaths, and attributed them to “illnesses”. In most of the cases, even postmortem was not done.