One of the cardinal principles to win over COVID-19 worldwide is transparency, besides testing, tracing and treating. In the initial phase, both India and South Korea continued to do well in this battle against coronavirus because their respective leaders have insisted on transparency; also from the beginning PM Narendra Modi guided all concerned departments, state governments to adhere to this principle. Unfortunately, the situation is worse in our National Capital ‘Delhi’ because of wicked ideas and cheap tactics of one person- CM of Delhi in this respect.
A hidden game of distorting and hiding coronavirus patients’ data is going on in Delhi, led by Kejriwal government. This is evident and has been proven by the mismatch in data of Delhi government and the data as being reported by various hospitals of Delhi. The number of coronavirus deaths reported by Lok Nayak Hospital, Ram Manohar Hospital, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Delhi and jhajjar centres of AIIMS is 116 as per data reported by these hospitals; but the dedicated site of Delhi government https://delhifightscorona.in/ reports 68 deaths as of May 10 which depicts the wicked face of the state government.
The statement by Medical Director of LN Hospital Dr. JS Passey made it crystal clear. “I don’t know what the Delhi bulletin is reporting. At our hospital there have been 47 COVID-19 deaths so far. I don’t know why they are showing less,” said Passey. Similar is being encountered at other hospitals too; as per Delhi government 26 COVID-19 related deaths have taken place at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital till Friday, but the Medical Superintendent of the hospital, Dr. Minakshi Bharadwaj, said 52 such deaths have occurred in the hospital till Friday. She further added, “ We have multiple times raised the issue of lesser number of deaths from our hospital being reported by the Delhi government. Even the total number of positive cases reported by them of our hospital is less. Every day, we are sending fresh data and I have no idea why they are reporting lesser (number of) cases.“
Such distortion of data and hiding the actual number of deaths due to COVID-19 is also being reported in many other hospitals and the government is under-reporting the numbers so as to hide its failures. These incidents show that the Delhi government is a total failure in the fight of COVID-19 and trying to fool people with its frequent press conferences full of falsifications be it in terms of data or of performing the relief work. With all these terrible situation going Chief Minister remains unfazed and hiding the failures by distorting the figures. As of now he is misleading ,misreporting and mishandling Delhi’s fight against coronavirus and instead focusing on opening of liquor shops and also planning for home delivery in this respect; having greed for taxes and ignoring the larger interests of people .
The Delhi government should respect the mandate provided to them and should not indulge in such cheap tactics, the price of which the “Aam Aadmi” of Delhi will have to pay for with their life. Till now the state government has proven to be inconsistent in handling the situation, the Centre should intervene and save the national capital before situation gets worse.
(Note: The author of the article is Yash Srivastava. He is a socially active student at Maharaja Agrasen College, University of Delhi)