COVID-19: People deserve to know death toll, Patna HC to Bihar govt.

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.