HYDERABAD: Furious with the Telangana government for its failure to submit exhaustive reports on the measures taken to rein in the transmission of Covid-19, a division bench of the High Court on Wednesday said the State, on the contrary, was acting against the fundamental right of the people to live.
Expressing displeasure for filing a report which was ‘very vague’, the bench warned of summoning the Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary to Medical and Health, Principal Secretary to Municipal Administration and GHMC Commissioner before the court for not complying with the directions given earlier on the conduct of Covid-19 tests, furnishing a list of containment centres in the State and so on.
“It is the government’s foremost duty to protect the people from a pandemic and the same was enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution,” the bench observed and directed the State government to implement all its previous orders on the issue.
It also told the government to submit a report on the Central team’s recent visit to the State to assess the Covid-19 crisis. Comprising Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy, the bench passed this order through video-conference in a batch of PILs, which sought directions to the government to provide required medical equipment, medicines and trained staff to designated Covid-19 hospitals.
On an earlier occasion, the court directed the State government to submit affidavits by the superintendents of government hospitals giving details of the infrastructure required and their preparedness to deal with the infection, and number of PPE kits distributed to doctors and paramedics every day.
Further, it directed the government to publish critical information on a daily basis not only in the media bulletin, but also in regional newspapers. Secondly, the information available within the GHMC area should be published ward-wise and the said information immediately communicated to residential associations to make people aware of the dangers posed by Covid-19.
Finally, safety measures prescribed by the government and ICMR should be followed. Pursuant to the earlier directions of the court, Advocate General (AG) BS Prasad submitted a report. After perusing the contents of the report, the bench, while terming it as ‘very vague’, said the State Chief Secretary had said the government was adhering to the ICMR guidelines.
Vital info missing from health bulletins: HC
On the other hand, the Director of Public Health said testing was stopped due to lack of sufficient facilities. Why these contradictory statements? the bench questioned the AG. It also found fault with Director of Public Health Dr G Srinivas Rao for violating the ICMR guidelines on conducting tests. Earlier, the government had informed the court that it would conduct 50,000 tests in 10 days, but only 30,877 have been done till date. “Out of 33 districts, the government has conducted tests in 12, what about the remaining districts?” the bench questioned.
Despite court directions, vital data is missing in the health bulletins and are not published in newspapers, thereby concealing such information from the people, it remarked. Petitioners’ counsels Chikkudu Prabhakar, Poojitha, Naresh Reddy and others informed the court that the government had failed to meet the standards set for conducting 50,000 tests in 10 days beginning from June 16. Telangana has the fourth highest Covid-19 cases in the country but is testing the least, with 2,215 tests per million people. Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has conducted over two lakh tests between June 19 and 29, they argued.
The AG sought some time to file a detailed report. The bench posted the matter to July 20 for further hearing.