The Centre on Friday blamed the Delhi Government for rising Covid-19 cases in the national Capital and said despite “repeated exhortations” it did not take steps to enhance testing capacity, particularly for RT-PCR, which remained static at around 20,000 tests for a long time.
Responding to it, the Delhi Government termed it very unfortunate. “It is extremely unfortunate that the central government has chosen to play dirty politics in this critical hour. The affidavit seems to have been drafted by a BJP Spokesperson, rather than by Union Government which is meant to work in collaboration with the states at the time of a pandemic. The affidavit is also factually incorrect.”
Delhi Government is worried about the well being of its people and will continue to work together with all governments and all agencies as it has been doing so far. We hope the Central government will also refrain from playing dirty politics, it said.
The government further said that Amit Shah promised to provide 750 ICU beds within 72 hours in the meeting held on 15th Nov. “Till date, only 200 beds have been provided. We hope the centre will provide the rest of the beds soon. The Central government has deprived Delhi of all funds provided to other state governments during this epidemic on the flimsy premise that Delhi is a UT. Therefore, we hope that the central government will do something concrete for Delhiites rather than play the blame game,” he said.
In its affidavit, filed before the top court, the Ministry of Home affairs (MHA), said “while there were regular advertisements on achievements of Delhi Government, including on dengue prevention and control, no ads on COVID appropriate behaviour were to be seen. The people, at large, were also not apprised about this through regular outreach measures”.
It said, “That despite repeated exhortations in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases, the Delhi Government did not take steps to enhance testing capacity, particularly for RT-PCR, which remained static at around 20,000 RTPCR tests for a long time”.
