Bed booking row: Tejasvi Surya tries to clear name

BENGALURU: Member of Parliament Tejasvi Surya on Monday created another storm as he tried to clear his name in giving a communal angle to the bed allocation scam. He also made an attempt to assure people that reforms have been done in the bed allocation system and portal. He refused to answer questions posed by the media as to who gave him the list of names and what was told to him when the list was given.

He also ducked the question as to why only 16 names from the minority community were read out when the list had 19 names. He refused to comment on why he should not be held accountable for the statements made by the MLAs who accompanied him to the south zone war room on May 6.

He claimed that because of his efforts, Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa, Minister Arvind Limbavali, Infosys Foundation, Nandan Nilekani’s team and volunteers of I- Spirit corrected the anomalies in the bed allocation system in a day. He said that unlike earlier, now doctors will book beds and each person handling the booking will be made accountable as his name will be recorded along with BU and SRFID number and the hospital’s name.

Surya said that the time stipulated for a patient to reach a hospital has been reduced from 10 hours to four, as a needy patient does not take that long to reach. Also those under home isolation, discharged and deceased will be listed in the portal and the manual unblock facility has been deleted by BBMP. But government and BBMP officials are not happy with the MP for claiming all the credit for cleaning up the system.

A top official told The New Indian Express, “Work on SMS, queue system, reducing the time to reach hospital from 10 hours to six and upgrading the portal software were on for the last one week. Had Surya not created the row and affected the works, all the services would have started last week. But since he is an MP and that too from the ruling party, let the government take credit.”