HC tears into T’gana govt over failed Covid strategy

HC tears into T’gana govt over failed Covid strategy

‘State Resorting To Suppression Of Information’

SagarKumar.Mutha@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad:02.07.2020

The Telangana high court said on Wednesday that the state government had not only failed to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus but also kept people in the dark about its spread and did not implement important orders of the court.

A bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice B Vijaysen Reddy told advocate general B S Prasad on the one hand the chief secretary says the government is following ICMR guidelines on testing and on the other the director of public health stops testing. “The ICMR never said testing should be stopped,” the chief justice said.

The bench told chief secretary Somesh Kumar and other officials to either implement its orders by July 17 or appear before it on July 20. The judges were particularly upset about their orders about giving detailed media bulletins not being followed.

Hearing a bunch of PILs filed by Prof PL Visweswara Rao of Telangana Jana Samithi and others, the bench said public health director Dr G Srinivas misled the court about tests and dissemination of information to the people.

The judges directed the state to submit detailed information on tests conducted in the state along with tests done on asymptomatic and symptomatic people, and whether primary contacts of positive patients were being tested as per ICMR guidelines.

The judges found fault with the authorities for failing to conduct 50,000 tests in 10 days, as was promised, and for unilaterally stopping them for a few days on the grounds that they were unable to test the large number of samples. “You cannot stop things like this. This is contrary to ICMR guidelines,” the bench said.

“Instead of increasing tests, you are stopping the conduct of tests, the bench said, rejecting a report filed by the public health director. “Next time, let this director file a sworn affidavit along with his reports so that we can fix responsibility on such officials if they openly resort to perjury,” the bench added.

“Contrary to popular perception, young people in the 26-to-35 age group are most affected by the coronavirus in Telangana,” the bench said. “Instead of letting people know such information so that the younger lot will come out of the misconception that only old people have to be careful, the state is resorting to suppression of such information. None of the media bulletins carry details of age, gender, area, etc. though we gave an order on June 18 itself asking officials to reveal information to people,” the bench said.

“There is no containment policy. All containment zones were closed. There is total confusion as to the areas that were most affected by the virus. Though we have directed the state, its health officials to regularly publish details of affected people ward-wise, the authorities ignored our direction,” the bench said.

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