The Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court took suo motu cognizance of several newspaper reports citing differences and lack of coordination among the officials concerned in tackling and handling Covid-19 situation along with reports on the employees including 1,000 teachers skipping the assigned pandemic-related work.

The Court expressed its displeasure over the situation and issued a set of instructions, including directing the officials to take stern action against people who shrug their responsibilities and duties under one or the other pretext.

The court has appointed senior counsel Rajendra S Deshmukh as the amicus curiae and placed the next date of hearing on July 3 while asking that “the state home and health departments are also to be made respondents”.

While taking cognizance of increasing number of patients, the bench, comprising justices TV Nalawade and Shrikant D Kulkarni, referred a report on all ruling party meetings where the members had expressed their disappointment over how the Covid-19 situation being tackled in the city and state.

While mentioning reports about statement of the divisional commissioner that there was a lack of coordination between municipal commissioner and the district collector, the court dubbed it to be “unfortunate”.

The Court remarked: “It can be said that there is the possibility of ego matter, also possibility of non-coordination and non-cooperation. In such a situation, all of them including the police machinery need to work together, but it appears that there was no such coordination.’’

The bench also noted the reported statement of the municipal commissioner (administrator Astik Kumar Pandey) that now he wants to follow the Kerala and Dharavi pattern. “It is necessary to know as to which steps were taken if the pattern like Kerala and

Dharavi were not followed in this region,’’ the court remarked.

The court also observed that the “authority and the state need to be very strict and even harsh and they need to go to the extent of using power given under the Article 311 of the Constitution against the persons who are not discharging duty”.

While issuing directions the bench made it clear that the respondents would have to report to the court on actions they would be taking in terms of these directions.

The respondents were directed to report to the HC the action taken against those who did not do their job during the pandemic. The court has also directed the authorities concerned to install CCTV cameras at the quarantine centres where the people are kept in isolation.

It also directed the respondents to see that the record in respect of contact tracing is now preserved. “We want to ascertain as to whether the teams/squads created for contact tracing have honestly worked and they have collected necessary information,” the bench said.

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