– Photo : Amar Ujala
Expansion
The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court on Wednesday took a tough stand on not presenting the information about ventilators in the government hospitals of the state. It said, even after a month of the earlier order, the government lawyer could not present the details, saying that he did not get the complete information as usual. The division bench of Justice Rajan Roy and Justice Om Prakash Shukla expressed displeasure and said that the government officials should consider the importance of the matter. If we do not get the answer, we will give strict orders.
The court gave this order on a petition filed in 2016 by Prince Lenin, general secretary of the organization “We the People”. In this, the issue of availability of ventilators in the local PGI and KGMU was raised. The court ordered to list this matter for hearing in the second week of July. It said that if the government’s counter affidavit is not submitted by then, then a special secretary level officer of the Medical Health Department will have to appear at the time of hearing through video conferencing.
In fact, on a public interest petition, the court had first asked the state government how many ventilators are there in the state’s government medical colleges and hospitals? What is their status? The court had ordered the government lawyer to present the details of each district sequentially in four weeks. During the hearing on Wednesday, the desired counter affidavit from the state government could not be presented in the case. On this, the court has given a strict order and asked the government lawyer to inform the concerned officials about this order.
