The Khalsa Northeast Centre, which has served cooked meals to over 1 lakh people during the lockdown so far, urged the Assam government to join hands with it to set up a community kitchen here to feed the slum dwellers and needy during the remaining days of the lockdown in compliance with the Supreme Court directive.

The Khalsa Centre achieved the milestone on Thursday, after feeding 5,000 people at Boragaon dumping ground locality and Gandhibasti slums here, all with contributions from its members and a few well-wishers.

“We feel this is the time the government could join hands with us to help us set up a community kitchen in the city, as directed by the Supreme Court, to fight hunger and we could provide food to a much larger number at this crucial time. The city has a large number of slums and migrant labourers. Hence, the need is huge,” the centre’s chairman, P.P. Singh, said.

Leader of the Opposition Debabrata Saikia had also suggested that the government set up a community kitchen to feed the needy.

Elaborating on the initiative, Singh said, “As soon as Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown, we realised that lakhs of daily-wage earners and others will need food and decided to start daily langar (community kitchen) for them and applied for permission from Kamrup (metro) deputy commissioner Biswajit Pegu.

He granted it on March 26 and we started the langar from March 27 with food for about 1,500 people which increased every day. Our team was accompanied by Kamrup (metro) officials to assess our competence to maintain social distance and discipline when we started distributing food in the slums of Guwahati.

After observing us for a day, additional deputy commissioner Ratul Pathak was convinced we can carry out on our own. We started distributing nutritious khichdi, blending at least 10 different vegetables and four types of pulses, all over the city.”

The centre has catered to people from Khetri to Rani, including major locations such as Jalukbari, Pandu, Maligaon, Panbazar, Bhootnath, Uzan Bazar, Gandhibasti, Noonmati, Narengi, Panikhaiti, Sonapur, Hatigaon, Sijubari and Satgaon.

“But what pains us is the government’s silence so far despite our request to make the initiative a joint one by setting up a community kitchen so that more needy people can benefit. The government has also turned a deaf ear to our request for insurance cover to the team members, like others fighting Covid-19, because they are also braving the odds all the time. However, I am hopeful that our team’s will to serve humanity will keep us going,” he said.

He lamented that instead of providing security, police had discouraged the centre’s people from distributing food in some localities such as Sijubari.

“We were told that there could be stampede or even riot if we distributed food in those pockets. However, we distributed food in Sijubari thrice at our own risk and the people there were quite cooperating and disciplined,” Singh said.

On funds involved so far, Singh, a former defence personnel, said they had not calculated it but, “our rough estimate is Rs 25,000 per day to feed 5,000 people”.

He acknowledged the help offered by the NF Railway, the Kamrup Chamber of Commerce, Assam DGP Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta and his officials, the district administration and officials of the Indian Oil.