The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court (HC) on Friday said that it would pay surprise visits to hospitals, quarantine, and Covid care centres in the city after it was informed that officials continued to be negligent in their Covid duties despite the court’s direction to initiate a suo moto public interest litigation (PIL) based on news reports on the matter.

The Court said that if they found public servants shirking their responsibilities, they would issue directions for registering criminal complaints against such officials. They would also seek details of negligent officials from the Aurangabad civic administration.

A division bench of justice TV Nalawade and SD Kulkarni, while hearing the suo moto PIL initiated at their behest, was informed by senior counsel Rajendra Deshmukh appointed as Amicus Curiae, that indiscipline and apathy among public servants involved in containing the spread of Covid-19 continued even though the court had issued strict directions in the previous hearing.

Public prosecutor for the state DR Kale, however, assured the court that based on the previous directions, disciplinary action had been taken against public servants and persons who were not obeying orders made by the officers and authority created under the Disaster Management Act, 2005. Kale claimed that since said action was not publicized, it seemed like the authority was not acting. Kale also submitted a compilation of documents to show what action had been taken against errant public servants.

However, Deshmukh submitted that there was still no discipline among public servants and Covid staff, and they remain absent from duty.

“It is a fact that the graph of the affected persons is still ascending in Aurangabad district. This court has already observed that only giving direction is not sufficient, the directions need to actually be implemented,” the bench said.

In light of these observations, the court said that it would pay surprise visits to hospitals, quarantine, and Covid care centres and containment zones. It said that if it finds that staff negligence is leading to the spread of the virus, criminal action will be taken against the errant public servant or staffer, no matter their rank. “This court will not be sparing anyone if such lapses are found,” the bench said, posting the hearing for July 7.

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