COVID-19: People deserve to know death toll, Patna HC to Bihar govt.
The Hindu
State’s reluctance to publish the number of deaths is ‘uncalled for’ and is not ‘protected by any law,’ says Bench.
The Patna High Court has pulled up the Bihar government again for not maintaining its records of births and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic and said that State’s reluctance to publish the number of deaths was “uncalled for” and was “not protected by any law”. The Division Bench of the court, comprising chief justice Sanjay Karol and justice Sanjay Kumar, further said that “to cover with a veil of secrecy the common routine business is not in the interest of the public. Such secrecy can seldom be legitimately desired”. “In our considered view, the resistance [to publish records of deaths and births] is uncalled for, as such action is neither protected by any law nor in consonance with settled principles of good governance. The government, while correcting its myopic approach only needs a reminder that to cover with veil of secrecy the common routine business is not in the interest of the public,” said the court on Friday while, hearing a suo motu public interest litigation petition on COVID-19 management.Leaders and legislators hailing from Ballari, which is part of the Kalyana Karnataka region, seem to be a source of much political upheaval in Karnataka, going by recent history. This has been the case since the time illegal mining hit national and international headlines in the 2000s and the place gained reputation as “Republic of Ballari”.
The former BJP MLA of Udupi K. Raghupathi Bhat claimed on Saturday that he contesting the Legislative Council elections from South West Graduates’ Constituency as rebel candidate made the saffron party field its party leader C. T. Ravi in the biennial elections to the Legislative Council from the Legislative Assembly.