An attempt to offer a counter view to this article. Its central premise seems to be 'don't blame the court, coz it can't solve the crisis anyway'. This seems to be a strawman argument. Nobody is expecting the Court to do the executive's job of solving the migrant crisis.(1/n) https://twitter.com/Arghya_justify/status/1265889599559098370

The criticism is for not attempting to hold the govt accountable. The criticism is for blindly endorsing the claims of the govt, overlooking strong contrary reports. (2/n)

The criticism is for allowing the govt to get away with bland claims that the reports about the miseries are "baseless" and "fake news" caused reverse migration.(3/n)

The issues before the SC were specific, such as direct payment of wages to accounts, ensuring MGNREGA wages, train journey without fares(which court agreed today in suo moto case though earlier plea on same was turned down) (4/n)

If the Court had declined interference in these cases saying that the issues are beyond the judicial domain, it would have been still understandable. That would have been judicial restraint, and still justifiable to an extent. But is that what the court did? NO. (5/n)

The Court went ahead and said the government was doing all fine, simply based on the unilateral and unverified claims by the executive. Why give the clean chit, when things are not clearly going well? This is where the criticism is linked to lack of judicial independence (6/n).

It was not a case of "judicial restraint" but of "judicial deference", that too on one-sided claims.

And the argument that the Courts can't change things may not also hold good. We have at least two live examples - Karnataka HC and Gujarat HC. (7/n)

Karnataka HC got the govt to change its policy regarding bearing of rail fare of migrants from other states. Gujarat govt took steps to improve conditions in Ahmadabad civil hospital after HC rap. Now, things may not have drastically improved only coz of court intervention.(8/n)

But at least the court did its job of calling out the executive's bluff, and put some pressure to act. That's the least expected of judiciary. In my view that's not even judicial activism; that's just the normal routine job of the constitutional court. (9/n)

Clearly such a response was lacking from SC, and I don't think that is justifiable as "judicial restraint".

As to another point in the article that 'we need labour reforms than judicial interventions' :-

True, there are long standing systemic issues relating to labour (10/n)

But the issues before Court were with respect to the basic rights of migrants -. food, shelter, transportation. Most basic rights affecting the very existence of life!. The issue of labour reforms is a debate for another day, which can wait the end of the present crisis (11/n)