HC seeks report from Bengal govt about dengue outbreak
A division bench comprising of Acting Chief Justice Joytirmoy Bhattacharjee and Justice Arijit Banerjee on Friday sought a report from West Bengal government on the present dengue situation of the state with details of how many people have died of the disease and the steps taken by the government to combat the outbreak.
The division bench asked the government to submit the report within Friday, November 11. The order was passed in response to three Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in the court over the past few days.
Hundreds of patients have died of dengue, a viral infection spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito in several districts of the state over the past few weeks.
The PILs were filed fearing that the authorities are suppressing figures related to the number of people died and affected with the disease.
The Opposition Congress and CPI(M) on Friday brought out two rallies in the Kolkata to protest the failure of the Mamata Banerjee government to control the spread of dengue. CPI (M) state committee secretary Biman Bose said the disease has spread and the situation has gone “out of control” because of failure of the government to take prompt measures to combat the disease. State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury criticised the state government for its attempts to suppress the number of deaths and the total number of persons affected with the disease.
However, the petitioners who filed the case in the Calcutta High Court demanded compensation to the relatives of deceased who have died in dengue. The litigants also urged the court to ask the state government to come up with the actual figures related to the number of deaths and actions taken by the government to control dengue.
One of the petitioners of the PIL advocate Rabishankar Chatterjee said he sought an order to the state government to pay compensation of at least Rs 10 lakh to the kin of the people who died of dengue and Rs 3 lakh to those suffering from the disease and getting treatment in different hospitals.