SC pulls up Centre, states on missing children’ status report

The Centre and several state governments today came in for sharp criticism by the Supreme Court for their failure to file status report on the issue of missing children with the bench saying that nobody seems to be concerned about them.

The apex court also came down heavily on the chief secretaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu for their failure to comply with its order to be present before it today on the issue, observing that they are “playing the fool with the court” and threatened to issue non-bailable warrants against them.

The bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir gave last opportunity to the Centre and the states which have not filed their affidavits on the matter and posted it for further hearing on February 19.

“Nobody seems to be concerned about the missing children. This is the irony,” the bench also comprising justices A.R. Dave and Vikramajit Sen said when senior advocate H.S. Phoolka, appearing for the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan, stated that hundreds of children were going missing everyday.

The bench was upset at the outset when it was told that chief secretaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu were not present despite its earlier order.

Out of the five states whose chief secretaries were asked to appear, only the chief secretaries of Goa and Orissa were present.

“Why they are not present? Shall we issue non-bailable warrant? They are playing the fool with the court. They can’t say they are indisposed. Don’t play fools with this court. There was a direction, they had to be present here,” the bench said when counsel for the Arunachal Pradesh government sought exemption from personal appearance of its chief secretary.

Similar remarks were made by the court for the non-appearance of the chief secretaries of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/221534" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-96f30e854327f33be3e3d5cd799d8260" value="form-96f30e854327f33be3e3d5cd799d8260" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="81539198" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.