Whither Accountability For ' Mass Deaths ' In Peace Times ?
BY R.K.MISRA
You
cannot escape responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today, said Abraham
Lincoln.
If so
be true, is an elected government and its bureaucracy not culpable
if it is found fudging death figures and has faulted in tackling a health
emergency like the Covid pandemic ?
It seems
not in Gujarat of India for despite the ‘seismic’ faults brought to light by a
vigilant judiciary there has hardly been any noticeable action , the high
mortality figures, notwithstanding.
Though
fearful of the likely fall-out of the large-scale mishandling of the pandemic
and it’s fall-out on the elections due in Gujarat this year, the BJP top
brass(read PM Modi) removed chief minister Vijay Rupani and his entire cabinet
and brought in little known Bhupendra Patel as replacement with a laundry fresh
cabinet . This was, however done, more to tide over the anti-incumbency than
with a genuine desire to fix both lacunae and responsibility and bring the
guilty to book in a state where the pandemic had consumed over a lakh of
people.
Gujarat
is projected as the model state of the country. It is the home state of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and his powerful Home Minister Amit Shah.
It has been ruled by the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP) for a quarter century
since 1995 with a Congress backed Regional outfit Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD)
holding fort for about 17 months in between.
Whether
it was the Rupani government which was in power from August 2016 to
September 2021 or Bhupendra Patel who replaced him as chief minister thereafter
, the Gujarat government adamantly struck to the figure of 10,094 (10,164
as of January 17,2022) covid related deaths in the state.
The
shroud however lifted when, in details placed before the Supreme Court ,
the Gujarat government had to admit that till February 3, 2022 it
has received 1,02,230 covid death claims, approved 87,045 and disbursed the
compensation amount of Rs 50,000 to 82,605 families while rejecting 8994
applications with 6000 applications still under scrutiny. The figure for
children orphaned in Gujarat due to the pandemic at the time of the submission
was 5867 with compensation being paid in 3287 of these cases.
Further
proof, if needed, came on March 9 when the Gujarat government made an
additional provision of Rs 585 crores for providing compensation to next of kin
of Covid-19 victims as per the apex court guidelines. By rough calculations the
government was provisioning for a total compensation payment to 1.17 lakh
people.
Hauled
over the coals following the disclosure, the state government explained
away the discrepancy in figures due to the Supreme Court amending the
definition of corona virus deaths last year.
One of
the legacies handed down by the 13 years of Modi’s chief ministerial stint to
his successors has been a marked tendency towards opacity in information
sharing. This was most noticeable in Gujarat when government agencies moved
every sinew in their system to thwart data collection of covid death victims by
media persons. Obviously the state was hiding a mountain of data as the figures
of Covid-19 deaths in Gujarat has risen ten times over followed by Telangana
with eight times.
It is the
Supreme Court which has proved the saviour of the next of kin of Covid victims.
The Centre initially sought to wash its hands off the affair. In June last it
conveyed to the Supreme Court its inability to pay the Rs 4 lakh compensation to covid victim families as it would exhaust disaster relief funds.
Ditto said state governments. When the Supreme Court insisted that compensation
will have to be paid and the Centre may decide the quantum, that it came
up with a figure of Rs 50,000 to be paid by the states .
It is not
merely the Supreme Court which took up cudgels on behalf of a harassed
population left to battle a killer virus, the Gujarat High Court also
tried hard to stir a somnolent Rupani government into action, but apparently in
vain.
When the
first Covid wave hit Gujarat in 2020, it’s High Court, had Suo motu
initiated a PIL .It had strong words to say for the Rupani
government’s handling of the Pandemic. In an order on May 23,2020,it had termed
conditions at the Government Civil hospital in Ahmedabad where 377
Covid-19 patients had died by then as “ pathetic “. “The hospital is as good as
a dungeon, may be even worse “, a division bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and
Justice IJ Vora had observed as it issued a host of directions to the state
government. “Does the health minister of the state have any idea about the
problems which patients, doctors, nursing staff and other employees are
facing? How many times has the concerned minister interacted with medicos
and staff on the spot to understand their difficulties, the order questioned. A
year later, it was again the High Court which rallied to the help of the
citizenry.
Just
about an year later, on April 11, 2021 , the High Court, this time the Chief
Justice ,Vikram Nath took Suo moto cognizance and initiated a PIL
observing that media reports indicated that the “ state is heading towards a
health emergency of sorts” and also that there was an uncontrolled
upsurge and serious management issued in Covid-19 control”.
On April
16,2021,in an order, the division bench of Chief Justice Vikram Nath and
Justice Bhargav Karia had asked the state government to release the actual
figures of death of COVID-19 patients and those who died with co-morbid
conditions. ”Suppression and concealment of accurate data would generate more
serious problems including fear, loss of trust and panic amongst public at
large”, it had pointed out.
If the
judiciary was straining every nerve, the executive’s response seemed tepid,
even when the highest court of the land was concerned. The Supreme Court,
through an order of October 4, 2021 ordered disbursing of Rs 50,000
compensation to the next of kin of Covid-19 victims with directions
for disbursing the amount within 30 days. ”No state government will deny the
benefit on the ground that the cause of death on the death certificate is not
Covid-19 and the district authorities should take remedial measures to
get the cause of death correct”, ruled the Supreme Court.
A word
for the wise should be enough but the Gujarat government response stumped
enough to make lawyer Amit Panchal approach the Supreme Court to point
out that the state had on April 29 issued a notification appointing a
committee to certify the claims. ”An attempt to over-reach our directions’,
said the apex court, threatening to summon the chief secretary and home
secretary of the state.
The apex
court sought to simplify procedures through setting up of district committees
to address grievances of compensation seeking families. The Gujarat government
found its own interpretation and used this window to appoint a scrutiny
committee to award compensation
Apparently, taking advantage of the court order to simplify procedures , the government had gone ahead and appointed a scrutiny panel of its own to award compensation eliciting an angry reaction from the apex court and forcing the Gujarat government to retreat.
There is
accountability in war crimes, what about ‘mass deaths’ in peace times ?
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