On Tuesday, the High Court of Delhi said it did not understand the reason for the Delhi Govt’s “resistance” to the Courts monitoring from time to time the ramping up of Coronavirus testing in the city.

The remark came after the Govt of Delhi told the Court that issues raised (by other pleas) have already been addressed & adequate steps have been taken to manage health care & other services in Delhi.

A bench of Justices Hima Kohli & Subramonium Prasad, while hearing a petition filed through Lawyer Rakesh Malhotra seeking to increase Covid-19 testing in the city, was told by the Delhi Govt lawyer that last week, another bench of the Delhi HC had disposed of a similar plea during which the Court had noted that adequate steps have been taken by the Govt to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Delhi Govt lawyer Satyakam also raised questions on the maintainability of the application & said the petitioner should have filed a separate petition rather than filing an application in an already disposed of matter.

He said such applications can be filed only for making corrections/modifications in the order but not for raising fresh concerns & hence the matter should not be heard any further.

However, the Court said the earlier pleas, which were decided by the other benches, were concerned with the treatment, availability of beds, personal protective equipment kits, ambulances & denial of treatment to patients.

The bench also said in the course of the past 2 months, rapid expansion has taken place in terms of testing as the Delhi Govt understood the breadth of the infection & took measures to deal with it. It also said that taking note of the orders & facts in place, lieutenant-governor (L-G) Anil Baijal had also constituted a committee to look into Covid-19 testing & care.

The Court said that “...the resistance of the Delhi government to this court monitoring the progress made in ramping up the testing, is incomprehensible when admittedly, this is not an adversarial litigation & it is purely in the interest of the citizens of Delhi that all government departments & agencies act in tandem & work collectively to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic for larger public good. The technical plea taken by the government on the maintainability of an application in a disposed of matter would have engaged this Court had it been a routine litigation between two private parties. This is not so here".

During the hearing, the Delhi Govt, in a status report, told the court that the mandate of the Govt. of Delhi is to ramp up testing & deploy a combination of both rapid antigen testing & RT-PCR testing in such a manner that all categories of vulnerable groups & areas are covered.

It also said the Delhi Govt, till July 30, had conducted 5,24,431 RT-PCR tests -- 27,604 tests per million -- which are more than double the national average of 13,647 tests per million.

It asked the Delhi Govt to file a fresh status report & posted the matter for Aug 19.

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