SC not to hear plea on non-COVID patient rights

Petition is too general, says Bench

NEW DELHI, 03/08/2019: A view of Supreme Court of India during a hearing on Ayodhya issue at Supreme Court , as the the mediation process in the Ayodhya temple-mosque case has failed to evolve any solution, the Supreme Court said today, declaring daily hearings from August 6 in the decades-old dispute, in New Delhi on Friday . Photo: Sushil Kumar Verma / The Hindu

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to intervene, for the present, in a plea seeking to ensure that the fundamental rights to life and health of non-COVID patients are protected like that of COVID patients.

A Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said the prayer made by petitioner-advocate G.S. Mani was too general and without any “factual context”. Mr. Mani’s plea, filed in May, had said that major surgeries had been postponed and many hospitals had stopped their emergency ward treatment then. “No direction is necessary at this stage,” the court observed in its order on Tuesday.

It found another request made by Mr. Mani to ensure “adequate, frequent” medical care was provided to non-COVID patients during the lockdown as infructuous. The Bench disposed of another petition filed by Bibhuti Bhushan Mishra on the CoWIN registration system for vaccination.

“But you do not have to get CoWIN registration online, the government is allowing walk-in registrations after our orders in June... Your petition has been rendered infructuous after the government has permitted walk-in registrations as a matter of policy,” Justice Chandrachud noted.