Right To Dignity A Fundamental Right: SC

• A bench of the Hon’ble SC comprising Justices LN Rao and BV Nagarathna on Tuesday in the case of Budhadev Karmasker vs. State of West Bengal held that “Right to dignity is a Fundamental Right that is guaranteed to every citizen of this country irrespective of his/her vacation”
• The Hon’ble Court directed the State Governments and the Union Territories to issue ration cards and voter identity cards immediately to the sex workers from the list prepared by the NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation).
• The Court in the judgement said that on 19 July, 2011 the Court had directed the formation of a committee to advise the court on issues pertaining to the prevention of trafficking and rehabilitation of sex workers. It was on the basis of this report that the Court had issued directions to the Government.
• One of the issues raised in this report was that “it was very difficult for the sex workers to acquire proof of identity such as ration cards or Voter Identity Cards owing to the lack of the proof of residence. It has been mentioned in the report that District authorities do not recognise the identities of the sex workers and their children. Resultantly, the sex workers are deprived of their entitlement to basic human and fundamental rights. They are denied access to schemes meant for rehabilitation”.
• The panel in its report on 12 September, 2011 recommended that the existing verification rules as to address verification should be relaxed and the worker’s profession should not be mentioned. A sex worker who is a citizen of this country should not be denied voter id just because of their profession.
• An application was filed on 29 November, 2020 by the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee seeking a direction to the authorities to distribute monthly dry ration and cash transfers to sex workers who were struggling during the pandemic. They were deprived of the rations because they could not produce an Identity Proof.
• The Court observed in strict terms “As this Court had directed the State Governments and the Union Territories to issue ration cards and identity cards to sex workers a decade back, there is no reason as to why this direction has not been implemented till now. Right to Dignity is a Fundamental Right that is guaranteed to every citizen of this country irrespective of his/her vocation. There is a bounden duty cast upon the government to provide basic amenities to the citizens of this country.”
• The Court ordered immediate issuance of ration and identity cards on the basis of the list prepared by NACO and the State Governments and Union Territories have been directed to continue distributing dry ration to sex workers without asking for the proof of any residence or of their profession.

Read the article above? Let’s see if you can answer the following–
Right to live with dignity has been derived from which article of the Constitution?