BHUBANESWAR: There were many players in the State Government behind the Sum Hospital fire tragedy, but Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik chose to make the Health and Family Welfare Minister, Atanu Sabyasachi the proverbial scapegoat, who resigned today taking the moral responsibility for what is being widely discussed as the collective failure of the state government.
Since the tragedy occurred in an Institution that is related to health, obviously Atanu , the minister of the
Department , was the target. His other fault was that his wife, Bandana Khuntia, is an Assistant Professor in Zoology, in Institute of Higher Secondary Education, a wing of Siksha O Anusandhan University of which Sum Hospital is a unit.
Charges against Atanu was `nepotism` and turning a blind eye to all the medical related deficiencies that allowed the hospital to flourish under his patronage.
Sum Hospital came into being in 2006 when it had admittedly no approval of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority(BDA) to function. There again, admittedly, was no fire safety compliance. Sabyasachi was not the Health Minister then.
The fire safety compliance, the moot question today, is a subject under the Home Department of which Naveen Patnaik is the minister ever since he started ruling the state.
Hours before Sabyasachi's resignation, BDA Member Planning, Sudhir Mohanty merrily announced to the media that the hospital has no occupancy certificate from the Authority and was operating in flagrant violation of rules. So has maintained the Fire Services Department ever since the tragedy struck.
The mega mishap occurred beyond doubt because of non-adherence to building specifications and absence of fire safety measures where the Health department has very limited role to play.
What none questions is the complicity of Fire Services Department and BDA in letting the Hospital function and flourish despite lacunae. All, including the media, presume that it was the Health Department's concern and none else had a role in the tragedy.
So did the Chief Minister and the rest. If Sabyasachi is accused of furthering family interest, has the state
government so far bothered to find out what interests others who let the Sum Hospital Authorities run its profitable business in an illegal premises with such an elan and confidence?
The knee jerk reaction of BDA can at best be called an apology for its failure to rein in the violators in its eyes.
The Authority cannot suddenly wake up to a 'reality' and seek to absolve itself from the complicity of a tragedy of such a magnitude under the refuge that it's not empowered to act on such violation.
It is, at best, as the custodian of illegal and improper constructions in the city, trying to run away from its
accountability as much as others in the state government are doing.