Covid cover-up in state ruled by ‘India’s next prime minister’

‘Only one in 20 deaths’ officially recorded to protect rulers of politically sensitive Uttar Pradesh

A SURGE of Covid-19 in a bastion of support for the Indian prime minister has been met with cover-ups and intimidation as his party workers scramble to limit political damage from the crisis during local elections, doctors allege.

They claim test results are being fudged, medical staff gagged and death tolls under-counted in Uttar Pradesh, a state ruled by the man predicted to be prime minister Narendra Modi’s successor. Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, is accused of using authoritarian tactics to suppress reporting of the medical shortages as the pandemic takes hold among the state’s 240 million inhabitants.

Uttar Pradesh also has strong symbolic importance to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as it contains some of the holiest sites in Hinduism, including Varanasi and Ayodhya.

An estimated 30million voted to elect village leaders from 520,000 candidates in Uttar Pradesh yesterday, with fears crowding at polling booths would worsen what has become India’s fastestgrowing state epidemic.

Uttar Pradesh is also predicted to overtake Maharashtra, the state home to Mumbai, for new daily cases by the end of April, according to an Indian government think tank. Uttar Pradesh, along with Bihar and Rajasthan, has experienced the highest weekly growth in cases. One doctor, who works in the state’s capital, Lucknow, estimated only one in every 20 Covid deaths were being officially recorded in the state.

“Definitely, deaths are being undercounted,” the doctor told The Telegraph.

“It is huge. It is deliberate so as to show less number of deaths so that image of the government is protected.

“You go anywhere, any locality, people are cremating or burying their dead. Covid deaths happening at home are not counted at all.”

Testing labs had also been told to sit on positive results to keep official figures down, he alleged.

“Obviously, there is a fear among the doctors,” he said. “The government will terminate doctors if they talk about the crisis. And Yogi is just trying to downplay the havoc that is there in Uttar Pradesh.” Mr Adityanath this week triggered panic after saying police could arrest individuals and hospitals reporting a shortage of oxygen or beds.

Police this week prosecuted a man who had pleaded for help for an elderly relative. Shashank Yadav was accused of making misleading statements, even though his tweet simply read: “Need oxygen cylinder, asap.”

Mr Adityanath has insisted there is no shortage of oxygen or beds in the state, but the state will enter a full lockdown today. Another doctor said the government was trying to “hide the truth”.

“If the chief minister visits hospitals, he shall regret his comments that there is no shortage of oxygen,” said an officer in a private hospital in Lucknow, who wished to retain anonymity.

“He wants hospitals [to] hide the truth. He is least bothered about the people dying in hospitals and at homes,” he said. Reports of crematoriums overwhelmed by bodies have become increasingly at odds with official death tolls in the state.

On Tuesday the local government reported 39 deaths in Lucknow, despite a single crematorium in the city’s Bhainsakund district reporting 60 Covid-19 cremations. Bodies are allegedly lying for days in overwhelmed hospitals and there are long queues outside crematoriums in the major cities of Varanasi, Allahabad, and Kanpur. In Agra, in the same state, the authorities denied taking an oxygen cylinder from an 85-yearold woman, who later died, to give to a well-connected patient.

Cities including Delhi and Mumbai have so far borne the brunt of the pandemic, but the spread into rural Uttar Pradesh would make it more difficult to count deaths, said Bhramar Mukherjee, professor of public health and epidemiology at the University of Michigan.

“It is spreading now in rural areas and that is where India has the weakest infrastructure of reporting of deaths. In big metropolitan areas, people die in hospitals, but in rural areas they die outside of hospitals and the number of those deaths is much higher in somewhere like Uttar Pradesh.”

“It is one of the most demographically and politically heavyweight states, with a huge parliamentary representation. Whoever gains political weight in Uttar Pradesh has a lot of say in the central government and that is why it is so important,” said Avinash Paliwal, senior lecturer at Soas University of London.

Nationwide, India reported nearly 380,000 new infections yesterday, and 3,645 new deaths.

‘Anywhere, any locality, people are cremating or burying their dead. Covid deaths at home are not counted at all’

‘If the chief minister visits hospitals, he shall regret his comments that there is no shortage of oxygen’