Never asked for a five-star Covid facility: Delhi HC
NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court said on Tuesday it did not make any request for creating Covid-19 facilities for its judges, staff and their families in a five-star hotel and that an order saying so was “very misleading”.
“Do you think we as an institution can ask something like this when people are dying due to the lack of oxygen and they are not getting rooms in the hospitals? Will this not be patently discriminatory that people are not able to get beds and we say reserve 100 rooms in a 5-star for us?”
The Delhi government on April 25 issued an order directing The Ashoka hotel to convert 100 rooms into a Covid-19 care centre, where priority was to be given to Delhi high court judges and other judicial officers and their families. The order said that Primus Hospital would manage the Covid care centre at the five-star hotel in Chanakyapuri, adding that it was done on the request from the Delhi high court. The order was withdrawn on Tuesday night.
“The projection is that we have made this request to benefit ourselves or that you have done this to appease us,” a bench of justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli said. The court took suo motu cognisance of the matter and issued notice to the Delhi government seeking to know its stand.
Terming the government’s move as “unthinkable”, the bench said: “This is very, very misleading. High court has not made any request. There is no communication in this regard… We have not made any such request. We have not said anything of this kind. Two of our judicial officers have died. Our concern as their well wishers, therefore, was that we wanted in case they need hospitalization, then they should not face any problem and that has been translated into this order,” Justice Sanghi said.
The court said that the government cannot create such facilities for a certain class of people and asked the Delhi government to take “corrective measures” to withdraw the order.
When senior advocate Rahul Mehra, for the Delhi government, tried to apprise the court that media was making a wrong projection and that it was their “mischief”, the bench remarked that the press had not done anything wrong in reporting it.
“Media is not wrong in pointing this out,” it observed.
The bench noted in its order that an enquiry was made with the registrar general of the Delhi high court about any request, “who in turn denied in negative”.
A Delhi government spokesperson said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday asked for the file to investigate how such an order was passed in the first place. “Not even the deputy chief minister, who is the nodal minister for Covid management in Delhi or the Delhi health minister were aware of the order. No copy of the order has been sent to them either. That is why the deputy CM has asked for the file,” the spokesperson said.
According to the April 25 order issued by the sub-divisional magistrate, Chanakyapuri, Geeta Grover on April 25, Primus Hospital in Chanakyapuri was directed to run a Covid Health Care facility, provide ambulance for transfer facility and also be responsible for disposal of the biomedical waste.
The matter will now be heard by the chief justice of the Delhi high court as a public interest litigation (PIL).