The audit by the Supreme Court-appointed sub-group on Delhi’s oxygen demand is an interim report and not the final word, AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria said on Saturday as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, under fire for purportedly exaggerating the city’s needs, insisted that acute shortage of oxygen during the second wave of COVID-19 was “real”. He also appealed for an end to political bickering.
“The virus will win if there is a fight among stakeholders,” Mr. Kejriwal tweeted a day after his Aam Aadmi Party and the BJP hit out at each each other over the report. While the BJP accused the Delhi government of “criminal negligence”, AAP leader and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia alleged that the “bogus” report was “cooked up” at the BJP office.
Dr. Guleria, who heads the five-member sub-group, said: “It is an interim report. The oxygen needs are dynamic and change from day to day. The matter is sub judice.”
CM calls for joint fight
“May we work now if your fight over oxygen is finished? Let us together make a system so no one faces shortage of oxygen in third wave,” Mr. Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi.
The report of the sub-group constituted to audit oxygen consumption in hospitals in Delhi during the second wave in April-May stated that the city government “exaggerated” the consumption of oxygen and made a claim of 1,140 MT, four times higher than the formula for bed capacity requirement of 289 MT.
Bhupinder Singh Bhalla, Principal Secretary (Home) and one of the members of the sub-group, wrote to his fellow auditors on Saturday clarifying that the exaggerated oxygen consumption was “not claimed” by the Delhi government but was “a mere collation of consumption data for one day”.
This, he stated, was provided around May 12 by 183 hospitals, as per the proforma decided by the sub-group. The total oxygen consumption for Delhi, Mr. Bhalla stated in the note accessed by The Hindu, was 550 MT around May 12-13, about 10 days after the peak of COVID-19 in the Capital.
The draft interim report was circulated to the members of the sub-group “for kind perusal and approval” through emails on May 30. Mr. Bhalla said he had sent his detailed written objections and comments on the report on May 31 to the members by email.
His objections were added at the end of the report (pages 110-119) “just for posterity” leaving it to the reader “to make the effort, if he/she so decides, to interpret the entire report together”. Mr. Bhalla termed this “unfortunate and unacceptable” and said the report, as submitted, “does not have the approval of all the members”.
(With inputs from Special Correspondent)