‘Forming panel to probe oxygen deaths’

Tell L-G not to block inquiry committee to ascertain fatalities due to oxygen shortage: Sisodia to Centre

August 13, 2021 12:31 am | Updated 12:36 pm IST - New Delhi

A COVID-19 victim being taken away from Batra Hospital.

A COVID-19 victim being taken away from Batra Hospital.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday said that he has written a letter to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya that the Delhi government is again forming a committee to ascertain the deaths due to oxygen shortage during the second wave. He also said that the Central government-appointed Lt. Governor of Delhi should not block it.

“When the Delhi government had formed a high-level committee to inquire into deaths due to oxygen shortage, the Central government cancelled it through the L-G. How will you get the data? The data will come only from an inquiry,” the Deputy Chief Minister said during a ‘digital press conference’.

Questions from the media were not allowed during this digital press conference.

“Today, I have written to the Union Health Minister that we want to make this committee to do the inquiry. We will resend the file to the L-G. This time, tell L-G sir not to stop this committee. An authentic inquiry is necessary. The Central government should allow the committee to be made and allow the inquiry. I hope that we will get the Central government’s support on this,” he said.

The Minister said that it would be wrong to assume that there were no deaths due to lack of oxygen during the second COVID-19 wave in the Capital. It has to be admitted that there have been deaths due to lack of oxygen in Delhi, he said.

“So far, about 25,000 people have died due to COVID-19 in Delhi, but it is not known how many deaths occurred due to the lack of oxygen,” he added.

On April 24, Jaipur Golden Hospital, a private hospital, said that 20 critically ill patients had died overnight, and the hospital “linked” the deaths to oxygen crisis.

However, the Delhi government submitted a report to the High Court in May stating the deaths were not due to oxygen shortage.

Don’t want to debate

Mr. Sisodia said that right now he does not want to debate whether the Central government had asked Delhi to give data on deaths due to oxygen shortage by August 13.

“The Central government said that States did not send data on deaths due to oxygen shortage and we said that data should be asked first. Now, [we] got to know that data was asked till August 13. The debate whether [we] received the letter [to submit the data by August 13] or not is very small, so I’m leaving it. We will talk about it later. You will say that it was sent, and we will say that we didn’t get it, but I’m not getting into it now,” Mr. Sisodia said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Sisodia had said in a statement that it was “never mentioned” that the data can be submitted by August 13. “If there is any such letter that says so, then it must be shown by the Centre. In any case, the Delhi government will soon submit a report to the Centre,” he had said.

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