NEW DELHI: The AAP government on Tuesday accused the Centre of a “cover-up” and not allowing it to “account for reasons behind deaths” during the Covid pandemic. In a statement issued after Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya rejected the allegation of under-reporting of Covid deaths in Parliament, Sisodia asserted that there was a shortage of medical oxygen during the peak of the Covid second wave.
“The central government has been running a cover-up since the very start of the pandemic. It is because of their flawed policy and implementation that the country had to endure an oxygen crisis during the toughest phase of the pandemic,” Sisodia said in a statement.
The Delhi government “wanted to account for the reason behind deaths” during the pandemic, and had constituted a ‘Death Audit Committee’ to work towards that end, he said. “The central government, however, did not want their fallacies to be exposed so they did not let us go through with the committee as they knew what truth will come out in the open,” he alleged.
Earlier in the day, Mandaviya informed Parliament that the central government only compiles and publishes data sent by states. State governments register deaths. “Our job is to publish that data and nothing else. We haven’t told anyone to show fewer numbers (of deaths) or less positive cases. There’s no reason for that,” he said. The opposition, however, claimed that the government’s official death toll figure of 4-5 lakh is “false”.
TESTY TIES
At the height of the second wave of the pandemic, the AAP government and the Centre regularly clashed on the shortage of oxygen supply to hospitals. Matters had escalated to such a level that the two sides had reached the top court on the issue. Incidentally, the DTC has floated a tender for procurement of 15 cryogenic tankers having a total carrying capacity of 225 tonnes in anticipation of a third wave of infections.