Petition in Supreme Court seeks Commission to inquire Govt lapses in tackling COVID-19

Five Ex-Bureaucrats & an academician have approached the Apex Court through counsel Prashant Bhushan for setting up a Commission of Inquiry to probe the lapses on part of the Govt in handling the Coronavirus pandemic in the country.

On a day when Prashant Bhushan was slapped with a contempt notice by the Supreme Court for his tweets accusing the judiciary of “destroying democracy”, the present petition was filed asking Court to hold the Govt accountable for its “gross mismanagement” of the pandemic situation.

The petitioners include Ex-Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers KP Fabian & Madhu Bhaduri, Ex-Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers MG Devasahayam, Meena Gupta, Somasundar Burra & academician Amit Bhaduri.

The plea alleges that the Govt failed on many counts which resulted in depriving citizens of their right to life & livelihood. The plea alleges that the Govt failed to take timely & effective measures to contain the transmission of the disease despite getting notification of the disease from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Jan 2020. This began with a failure to screen all international passengers arriving in India, according to the plea.

Next, the plea claims the failure of the Centre to abide by its statutory obligations under the Disaster Management Act. Further, the petitioners accused the Centre of not consulting the National Task Force constituted on March 18, 2020, before imposing the lockdown. This committee had experts from the fields of epidemiology & public health. Timely & targeted provisions were not made to prevent job loss, income loss, deprivation of livelihood, starvation & exodus of migrant workers, the plea said.

The plea also touched upon the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) to health workers as an added ground for jeopardizing the safety of health workers.

The plea by Bhushan said that “The aforesaid lapses on part of the respondent (Centre) while dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic have led to a severe infraction of the fundamental rights of people".

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