Patna HC questions state on jump in Covid toll

PATNA: The Patna high court on Friday expressed serious concern over the sudden jump in Covid-19 toll from 5,424 on June 7 to 9,375 the next day and constituted a special bench to conduct detailed hearing on the issue on Saturday. The Patna high court generally remains closed on Saturday.
The bench expressed dissatisfaction over the counter affidavit submitted by the chief secretary on the revised toll of 9,375.The court was also apprised that the Buxar toll had also increased from 83 to 180 on June 8 after scrutiny.
“How did it happen? No one would have come to know about the total deaths had we not passed an order on it,” the division bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice S Kumar court observed orally when the new death figures were submitted before it during the hearing on Friday.
The state government had conducted scrutiny of the Covid deaths on the high court order on May 17 after a large number of decomposed bodies were found floating in the Ganga near Chausa in Buxar district.
The bench had directed the chief secretary to file a detailed reply on the deaths from Covid-19 or other reasons from March 1 this year and the government's methodology to ascertain that the deaths were due to the coronavirus.
The court refused some more time to advocate general Lalit Kishore for hearing the case and observed that the issue was extraordinary.
Kishore blamed the civil surgeons and panchayat secretaries for not providing accurate figures from districts.
Kishore also submitted that departmental proceedings would be initiated against all those found responsible for not reporting the correct number of deaths from Covid-19.
The bench also wanted to know how births along with deaths from Covid-19 and other reasons were made visible separately to common public on government portal.
Development commissioner Amir Subhani appeared before the bench virtually and submitted that the Registrar General of India controls the entire matter and some designated authorities at state level are granted access to control the portal on which birth and death figures are uploaded.
The court directed that a report on the matter be filed after a meeting with the authorities concerned to apprise how common people could see these figures.