PANAJI
Aam Aadmi Party has demanded a judicial inquiry into the shocking incident in which 67 Covid deaths went unreported. State Convenor Rahul Mhambre held the Health Minister directly responsible for this fiasco and demanded his resignation pending the judicial inquiry.
Addressing the media at the party office in Panaji on Tuesday, Mhambre charged that the government tried to conceal this data for months until it was no longer possible, and finally tried to get away with it by mentioning only a couple of sentences in extremely fine print at the bottom of the daily report.
“The BJP government has a bad habit of hiding its failures. Whether scarcity of beds, or shortage of oxygen, or the confusion over vaccines, we have seen this government try to brush things under the carpet. The CM resorts to making empty announcements to generate positive headlines, instead of solving the problems unless ordered by the High Court. Any other government would have at least held a press conference to inform the people on such a major lapse, but we didn’t even see a tweet from the CM or the HM on this grave issue,” Mhambre said.
Mhambre stated that ICMR guidelines very clearly specify the criteria and the procedure and the time limit for declaring a death as Covid death. Mhambre said a white paper needs to be released within 24 hours on how and why these guidelines were allowed to be flouted.
“Every person that is tested positive enters the reporting system, and has to be accounted for daily as either “active case”, “recovered”, or “Covid death”. Were these 67 victims counted as “recovered” even though they were dead? The government has promised action against the hospitals, but what about action against the officials and minister responsible for maintaining this tally?” Mhambre questioned.
Mhambre said the unreported deaths are a major issue of concern, as the data of Covid deaths is used for a lot of decision-making by ICMR at the national level and even WHO at the international level.
Wondering whether this was just the tip of the iceberg, Mhambre said further independent enquiry is required to establish whether possibly more deaths may have gone unreported in both private and Govt hospitals.
