New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre to “treat with urgency” the issues raised in the petitions challenging the home ministry’s March 29 notification asking private establishments to pay full wages to workers during the COVID-19 lockdown, saying lot of people are affected by it.
A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, conducting hearing through video-conferencing, asked the government to file its response on the batch of petitions and posted the matter for hearing after a week.
Attorney General KK Venugopal told the bench, also comprising Justices SK Kaul and MR Shah, the Centre has issued a new notification on May 17 which supersedes the March 29 Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) order. “Treat this with urgency. Lot of people are affected,” the bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was also appearing in the matter.
“Although, notices were issued in these matters but no counter affidavit has yet been filed on behalf of the Union of India,” the bench noted in its order.
“Solicitor General prays for and is granted a week's time to file counter affidavit to the writ petition(s) to enable the court to know the stand of Union of India on different issues raised in the writ petition(s),” the bench said.
