The Supreme Court’s attention was drawn on Monday to the reality that an unaccounted number of children may have dropped out of school because their parents, though alive, lost their jobs or families got displaced during the COVID-19 outbreak.
So far, the court has mainly focused on identifying children orphaned or who have lost one of their parents to the pandemic.
A Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao learnt that very little was known about children who were forced to drop out of school during the COVID-19 upsurge when their families lost their sole means of sustenance. In fact, the court wondered whether children who dropped out because their parents lost their livelihood may equal, if not best, the number of children orphaned by the COVID-19 virus.
