A step ahead?

New Delhi, Feb. 1: The Supreme Court today issued notices to the Centre, states and Union territories on a petition seeking a ban on all forms of child labour.

Referring to Article 21A, which guarantees the right to education for children between 6 and 14, the Supreme Court said: “After the amendment, there is no scope for child labour. There can’t be any place for children other than school. If there is no school, the state has to provide that.”

The apex bench of Justices K.G. Balakrishnan and G.P. Mathur gave the Centre, states and Union territories six weeks to respond to the PIL filed jointly by a group of NGOs.

The petition claimed that the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, which disallows the employment of children only in hazardous jobs, in a way legalise other forms of child labour.

The counsel for the petitioners, Ashok Aggarwal, said that almost six decades after Independence, almost half of the 20 crore children in the 6-14 age group were out of school and working.

According to the NGOs ? Social Jurist, HAQ-Centre for Child Rights and the Andhra Pradesh-based M.V. Foundation ? the situation in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu was dismal.

The rescue of hundreds of child labourers in Delhi and Mumbai recently brought the glare back on the menace. In November, over 500 minors working in “inhuman” conditions were freed after a raid on 50 embroidery units in east Delhi.

A few months before that, police rescued 465 children working in exploitative conditions in industrial units located in the congested Madanpura locality in central Mumbai.

The petitioners have urged that a directive be issued to the governments to make changes to all existing laws relating to child labour, including the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, Plantation Labour Act, Children (Pledging of Labour) Act and the Apprentices Act.

The amendments, they argued, would ensure that the acts conform to the Constitution, the UN Convention on Rights of the Child and the International Labour Organisation’s Minimum Age Convention.