Inter-ministerial Central Team led by Sri Apurva Chandra, on completion of their 2 weeks’ inspection of Kolkata’s Covid Situation, addressed the West Bengal Chief Secretary through a letter on May 4. It contained IMCT’s statements & observations of the State’s Covid scenario & its handling the same. Chandra’s letter to Rajiva Sinha raised serious allegations of Covid data fudging against West Bengal Government & of dereliction of duties by senior bureaucrats of the State.
Chandra mentioned in his letter that during their stay at Kolkata, IMCT had to write 07 letters to the Chief Secretary and 04 letters to Principal Secretaries of Home, Health, Urban Development & Municipal Affairs and Food and Supplies. This implies that ab initio, IMCT didn’t receive co-operation from the State Officials just in verbal interaction & in good faith. IMCT had to shoot frequent letters to different State bureaucrats for gathering necessary support & feedback thereof. This inharmonious attitude of the State bureaucrats towards their Central colleagues during meeting a global crisis like Covid, is unexplainable in the light of Constitutional directives.
Chandra’s letter categorically mentioned that IMCT couldn’t visit the field freely in West Bengal & had to repeatedly ask for State’s co-operation there. This is contrary to the desired official co-ordination between Centre and State. The Central team’s field visit was limited due to incongruous behaviour of West Bengal officers. IMCT wanted to assertively interact with more number of people, health professionals and State functionaries. They also looked forward to having meetings with the Principal Secretaries of Home, Health, Urban Development & Municipal Affairs and Food and Supplies of West Bengal at the convenience of not the IMCT officers, but the State officers. But IMCT didn’t get positive response & could not interact with any Department except Principal Secretary (Health) & that too through a video conference on April 23. Chandra is not happy by the ‘partial responses‘ he received from the Principal Secretary, Health, in that video meet.
It is quite shocking that in two weeks’ time, IMCT received no response from any other department of the State Government. Chandra elucidated the State’s attitude as ‘antagonistic.’ Any kind of antagonism goes against the basic spirit of the Constitution of India. West Bengal bureaucrats, by antagonizing IMCT, had violated that spirit. People of West Bengal should rise up against such audacity of the State’s Public Servants. West Bengal bureaucrats’ behaviours were completely contrary to the behaviours of other States’ bureaucrats towards IMCT. In all other States, IMCT received no obstacles, nor any obstinacy from their State Counterparts. What could be the possible reasons why West Bengal bureaucrats created such inconvenience for IMCT officers?
IMCT noted that on April 30, the State Government declared to furnish daily Statistics of all deaths of COVID patients and allowed the death certificates to be issued by the concerned hospital keeping the role of the infamous ‘Death Audit Committee‘ limited only to examining random samples. IMCT marked this step as ‘a big step towards transparency’. These apparently positive remark of IMCT actually depicted gruesome negativity of the state of affairs in West Bengal. When some obvious steps which were supposed to be taken by the State honestly from the very beginning of the pandemic but was not taken due to some unexplainable (?) reasons becomes marked as ‘a big step towards transparency’, then it perhaps indicates morbid anarchy of the State.
IMCT expressed anxiety over extremely high mortality rate of Covid patients in West Bengal. After the Government agreed to raise its total death count of COVID patients to 105 on April 30 out of its total reported number of Covid patients to be 816 on that date, the mortality rate became 12.8% which is the highest in India. IMCT observed this extremely high mortality rate to be a clear indication of low testing and weak surveillance & tracking. However, this extremely high mortality rate of Covid patients also unveils the glaring truth of acute infrastructure lacunae of West Bengal in the health sector. Higher mortality rate of West Bengal is perhaps because patients here are not receiving proper treatment & palliation due to lack of infra & lack of sufficient number of health providers. After the death of a retired engineer, an IIT Kharagpur alumni, in MR Bangur Hospital, which is a declared Covid Hospital of Kolkata, such information came up that Bangur’s quarantine facility had no medical arrangements except that of just staying. Is West Bengal’s glaring deficit of health infra also contributing significantly to the State’s high Covid mortality rate?
Apurva Chandra has elaborately pointed out the fact that Govt of West Bengal is publishing different data to different forums. Such a serious allegation raised by IMCT is rooted to the fact that West Bengal’s Covid data published in public domain by the State’s Department of Health and Family Welfare was suppressed & understated to misguide the people of West Bengal & to offer them a kind of euphoria about the State’s less number of patients & deaths, while data shared to the Government of India showed much higher number of patients & deaths. Such discrepancies of data & deliberate fudging thereof are serious dereliction of duties by the Government machinery & goes against public welfare. If People’s Government frauds the people, democracy fails. If public servants contraindicate public welfare, mustn’t they face consequences?
IMCT has also rightly identified the tall verbal claims of the State Government to be hollow. They pointed at the fact that the State’s claims were not supported by precise database thereof. “While the State Government has claimed very high level of daily surveillance of individuals in containment zones, no database was shown or results made available.”—wrote Apurva Chandra to the Chief Secretary of West Bengal.
During the stay of IMCT in Kolkata, over 50 lakhs persons were supposed to be surveyed in the four red districts. IMCT noted that the robust data management system for collating and evaluating a database of 50 lakhs persons was nowhere there. This detection of IMCT is in congruence with the fact that Govt of West Bengal didn’t recruit manpower through proper meritocratic evaluation. Through last 9 years, the old infrastructure & manpower is decaying away while Government didn’t rebuild it back.
IMCT applauded the efforts of the Health Department to increase the number of tests. From around 400 per day till April 20, West Bengal tested 2410 patients on May 2. IMCT had issued an order asking State Government to appoint data entry operators and offer them additional allowance for extra working hours. IMCT also advised West Bengal to keep on increasing the rate of testing in all the approved laboratories of the State. Till April 30, prior Government approval was required for admitting, treating & testing any patient as per ICMR protocol in any healthcare facility of the State. Due to this weird requirement of prior Government approval, hospitals were refusing patients. Ailing people were being heckled not receiving test & treatment at the Hospitals. Hospitals needed prior Government approval for each and every admission & test. Did Government of West Bengal keep such provision for prior approval because they didn’t want to show the right number of patients of the State? As per ICMR guidelines, all details of each patient treated under ICMR protocol were supposed to reach ICMR. Did that hurt West Bengal Government’s objective to hide its true Covid data? As a result, none but the patients were suffering by not getting test & treatment. Such inhuman approach was taken by the Government of West Bengal just to project a false well being of the State. That was the real reason why number of tests were so less in West Bengal till IMCT categorically intervened. The State didn’t want to show its horrific Covid picture & wanted to suppress it instead. Many patients died, perhaps without test & treatment who were cremated or buried in the deep of night in a clandestine manner. Just to project an euphoria, West Bengal Government could stoop so low. People died here without even getting the recognition of dying out of Covid pandemic. For image-building, West Bengal Government didn’t hesitate to indirectly sacrifice human lives. If this is not a genocide, what is? On April 30, after IMCT’s intervention, however, the State Government declared that such approval was no more required.
Being reprimanded by IMCT & receiving a strong letter from Apurva Chandra, West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha had admitted to the press on May 4 evening that Covid data counting system of West Bengal was wrong. He had to admit with a red face that data misreport was not deliberate but because the State’s counting system was wrong & complicated. Sinha’s confession implied that the Government of West Bengal took one & a half months to understand that the counting system was wrong. Would such inefficient bureaucrats be able to handle a densely populated State like West Bengal which is expected to see even more Covid cases in coming days? It needs to be mentioned here that doubts are in the air since beginning of the last week that the number of Covid Patients in West Bengal is not in four digits but in five. Does Chief Secretary’s press apology aim at covering up a bigger mess?
IMCT would be submitting its final report to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Would the public servants of West Bengal face stern consequences for serious dereliction of duties that ultimately resulted in loss of lives? Would Chief Secretary’s mere press-apology be able to compensate loss of so many lives in West Bengal?
Debjani Bhattacharyya