On Wednesday, India’s Supreme Court directed Delhi’s government to step up their efforts in providing food and shelter to the homeless. Most of the deaths among the homeless have been caused by starvation.
[Harsh Mandal, Human Rights Activist]:
"The court, in the morning and now, took a serious urgency about saving lives in winter. And it said let us first address the issue of temporary shelters, let us create as many shelters as people need."
The Delhi government has also been asked to make sure that the night shelters have basic amenities such as blankets, electricity and toilets. The location of all night shelters had to be immediately advertised in print and television media.
Currently, there are 40 night shelters in the city. But this number fails to meet the requirement of about 140, according to human rights activists.
The present number cannot even accommodate a small fraction of the capital's estimated 150,000 homeless people.
While winter temperatures in South Asia are mild compared to Europe, they can at times prove deadly in India, where thousands of homeless live in shacks without any heating sources.
