JAIPUR: Supreme Court has asked 10 states, including Rajasthan , to file a status report within four weeks on rehabilitation of persons still living in mental hospital in spite of being cured.In 2016, Delhi-based advocate Gaurav Kumar Bansal, filed a petition in SC for rehabilitation of such patients living in 43 mental hospitals across the country.A committee was formed under the orders of the top court which required these 10 states to file a status report by August 2018 but none of them complied following which few days back SC gave additional time of 4 weeks stating it will not be extended further.According to the findings, there are over 12000 such patients across the country. While one of the government mental hospitals in Jaipur has stated that there are 41 such patients, the other one in Jodhpur is yet to give the data.“There are still thousands of patients in the government hospitals across the country who are now mentally fit but still living in the hospitals along with the patients are undergoing treatment. I had filed a petition in 2016 following which a committee had been formed and the states had been asked to give a status report on the rehabilitation of the now cured patients but most of them did not comply and those which did give a report stated that nothing much has been done. Now SC has given additional four weeks’ time to these states”, said Bansal.After SC’s order, in 2017, Department of empowerment of persons with disabilities had then constituted a committee under the chairmanship of its secretary. The committee's report titled 'Guidelines for Rehabilitation of Persons Who Have Been Cured of Mental Illness’ observed that with current advancements in science, there should be no requirement of any person to be in the hospital beyond three to six months or maximally up to a year. It also stated that number of such patients in India are between 12k-15k.Bansal further added, “For Rajasthan, we have received data only from one hospital but according to our estimation, there are around 100 such patients in the state.”The other states and union territories which are supposed to give the status report include Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh , Andhra Pradesh, Manipur , Mizoram, Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu along with Lakshadweep.

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