WILL HELP PEOPLE DESPITE 1,000 PILS, SAYS GAMBHIR ON ALLEGATIONS OF HOARDING MEDS

East Delhi MP and former cricketer Gautam Gambhir on Wednesday said he will continue to “save people’s lives” even if a thousand public interest litigations (PILS) are filed against him, two days after the Delhi high court said that he has done “disservice” by storing large stocks of medicines used to treat Covid-19 during severe shortage of the medicine in the city.

Speaking at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Delhi office, Gambhir said, “I entered politics to help people and save their lives. I’m not afraid if one or hundred or thousand PILS are filed against me.”

He added, “Whatever the court decides, we will accept it. But whenever I’ll get an opportunity in the future to help people, I will do it because saving lives is the meaning of politics.”

A Delhi high court bench of justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh on Monday directed the state government’s department of drug control to launch an inquiry into three politicians — Gambhir and Aam Aadmi Party MLAS Praveen Kumar and Preeti Tomar — for allegedly buying and storing Covid-19 drugs and medical oxygen in bulk amid a severe shortage in the Capital.

To be sure, all three did not sell the medicines or oxygen, but distributed them for free to people in their constituencies. Also none of the politicians were named as party to the case.

On April 21, Gambhir announced on Twitter that people who needed Fabiflu tablets, an anti-viral, could get them for free at his east Delhi office.

The court, however, said it could not be called responsible behaviour.

“Gambhir must have done it with best of intentions. He has been a national player for our country. But when you know the medicine is in short supply and you buy over 2,000... Is that responsible behaviour? Should he not have realised that medicines are in shortage for others?,” the high court bench said.

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