Riot survivors' demand status verification by Supreme Court

LUCKNOW: About 1,700 families have filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking verification of their present status by a court-appointed independent commission. They have submitted photocopies of their ration cards. More than 4,000 families are staying at 25 relief camps in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli.

The move can be detrimental for the Samajwadi Party government, which informed the ministry of home affairs (MHA) that only 3,000 people are staying at six relief camps.

A party to the writ petition (criminal) number 170 of 2013 pending before the Supreme Court rubbished the state government claims on relief and rehabilitation of around 45,000 displaced riot victims. There are some 27,882 people living in 25 relief camps on private land and madrassas. "We tried to collect photocopies of the ration cards of all the families in these camps. But could only manage 1,700 as the rest had either left it behind while fleeing their homes or didn't have them," said activist and lawyer Asad Hayaat, a party to the case titled Citizens for Justice & Peace and others versus State of Uttar Pradesh and others. "Most of these 1,700 ration cards belong to villages the government had declared as riot affected," he said.

Asad said though the state government had in its letter to the MHA admitted that some "satellite camps" exist in addition to the six relief camps, the insertion of the phrase was unlikely to rescue the SP. "They can use the phrase as an escape route if confronted with irrefutable evidence to establish the existence of the 19 camps other than the six they have identified. But we are prepared for that," said Asad.

"Satellite camp means these camps must be smaller than the listed camps. But there is a camp in Jaula village of Budhana tehsil in Muzaffarnagar where 3,622 people are living. This makes the camp bigger than all the six camps that the government has identified taken together," he added.

"They had earlier misinformed the court by filing an affidavit claiming that no deaths were reported from any of the relief camps. Once we provided the court with the list of camps, date and name of the mother whose child had died, the government had to eat its words," Asad said. He added that it was only after the SC cautioned the UP government to verify our claims properly else the court would send an independent commission, the government came up with another affidavit admitting that children had died.