About 12 lakh to fifteen lakh individuals migrate inside Maharashtra, from dry Marathwada to western Maharashtra’s Sangli, Kolhapur, Pune, Satara, Solapur, and Ahmednagar — often known as the sugar belt.
| Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
The Bombay High Court took suo motu cognisance of an article by The Hindu on the monetary and sexual exploitation of Maharashtra’s migrant workers in the State’s sugar belt.
An article titled, “Sugar-belt shocker. The financial and sexual abuse of Maharashtra’s migrant workforce”, offers with the plight of the migrant workers from the drought-affected areas of the Marathwada area. They are required emigrate to the sugar belt of the State — western Maharashtra’s Sangli, Kolhapur, Pune, Satara, Solapur and Ahmednagar.
Flooding of houses
The court docket referred to as the article “disturbing” and took be aware that about 70% of 500-odd villages in Beed, Osmanabad, Jalna, Latur and a few elements of Nanded and Parbhani districts are emptied each winter. The tolis, a bunch of workers, both keep on the sugarcane manufacturing facility premises or in the sugarcane fields. Families transfer into short-term constructions that present little shelter as winter turns to summer time after which the rains arrive, flooding their makeshift houses.
Watch | The every day struggles of Maharashtra’s sugar-belt workers
“The plight of these workers is narrated qua financial exploitation and exploitation of lady workers also. The workers have also narrated the ordeals they have to undergo. The statements of such migrant workers are also part of the article,” the order learn.
It was printed on March 8 and on the identical day, a Division Bench of appearing justice S.V. Gangapurwala and Justice Sandeep Marne took suo motu cognisance of the identical. The Bench appointed senior advocate Mihir Desai to help the court docket and directed advocate Pradnya Talekar to organize a correct petition on the identical. The matter is predicted to be heard subsequent week.
