Probe sought into bungling on pandemic
A PIL filed by activist advocate Prashant Bhushan on behalf of six former senior bureaucrats is listed before the Supreme Court on Friday.
The PIL has sought an independent probe under the Commission of Inquiry Act into the Modi government's alleged gross management of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
The petitioners' case is that the response of the government to the pandemic and the deleterious impact of the same on the lives and livelihoods of the citizens of the country is a definite matter of public importance that warrants appointment of a Commission under Section 3 of the said 1952 Act.
Their writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution is listed in Court No. 11 of Justices Nageshwar Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ravindra Bhat.
Running into 369 pages with as many as 34 annexures, the petition has been filed by retired diplomat K P Fabian (79), who served in the Indian Foreign Service between 1964 and 2000, with stints in Indian embassies in Madagascar, Austria, Iran, Sri Lanka, Canada, Finland, Qatar and Italy.
The other co-petitioners are economist Amit Bhaduri (79), who resigned as professor emeritus in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in January early this year; his novelist wife Madhu Bhaduri (76), a former IFS officer who retired in December 2013; M G Devasahayam (79), a former Army and IAS officer and a reputed economist; Meena Gupta (72), a retired Orissa cadre IAS officer settled in Hyderabad; and Somasundar Burra (70), a retired IAS officer.
The petition seeks accountability from the Modi government, citing a score of lapses committed by it in dealing with the pandemic, including failure to undertake timely and effective steps to contain transmission of the disease despite being notified about it by the WHO as early as in January 2020.
Also, the alleged failure to adhere to the statutory obligations under the Disaster Management Act and consult the national task force of experts before imposing the nationwide lockdown and its subsequent extensions.