Chhattisgarh was largely in the news in 2014 for all the wrong reasons, be it increasing Maoist attacks resulting in heavy losses to lives of security forces or the death of 13 young poor women last month after surgeries at Government-run sterilisation camps in Bilaspur.
The BJP Government remained busy warding off Opposition attacks on many fronts, including the insurgency operation after a series of Naxal attacks, health facilities after loss of lives following tubectomies and death of newborn infants in Bilaspur and farmers issue over paddy procurement. The year, however, brought some cheers to cricket lovers as Naya Raipur-based international stadium hosted eight matches of Champions league T-20 tournament.
A decision by the Central Government this year to set up a national tribal university in violence-hit tribal stronghold Bastar was one of the rare good news for Chhattisgarh in 2014. Singh faced worst criticism from Opposition Congress after the botched sterilisation tragedy in Bilaspur in November which claimed lives of 13 women and left over a 100 critical.
While 12 of the 83 women, who were operated upon at Pendari village on November 8 died, a primitive Baiga tribe woman was the lone casualty from the camps at Pendra block, where around 56 women underwent surgeries at three different camps on November 10, after they developed post operative complications.
Under attack from Opposition and women associations, Singh constituted a judicial commission to probe the incident and terminated the services of laparoscopic surgeon RK Gupta who had conducted the sterilisation at Pendari camp and Chief Medical and Health Official Bilaspur RK Bhange supervising the procedure.
An FIR was registered against Gupta following which he was arrested. Three officials of Health and Food and Drug department were also suspended. Moreover, Ramesh Mahawar, director of drug company-Mahawar Pharma Pvt ltd which supplied “poor quality” medicines, and his son Sumit, were arrested and all products of their manufacturing unit banned in the State.
According to Health Minister Amar Agrawal, medical reports confirmed the presence of poisonous substance in the medicines distributed at the tubectomies camps.
Congress also blamed the State Government for “poor health facilities” following the death of at least 15 infants, most of them reportedly born premature, at the State-run Chhattisgarh Institute Medical Science (CIMS) in December. Throughout the year, the state faced several Maoist attacks which killed as many as 62 security personnel.