Andhra Pradesh High Court takes stock of Covid handling by state government
Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh High Court has suggested a series of measures to be taken up by the state government with regard to the effective management of Covid-19.
A division bench headed by Chief Justice A.K. Goswami and Justice C. Praveen Kumar held a hearing on Tuesday and asked the state government what measures it could take in case the number of Coronavirus cases rose rapidly.
The court asked about the availability of beds in the hospitals, medical oxygen, medicines, conduct of Covid-19 tests and the Covi19 vaccination. It asked about the deaths of Coronavirus-infected patients for want of availability of medical oxygen.
When the court asked whether nodal officers were appointed in districts and if flying squads were constituted to monitor availability of beds, medical oxygen, medicines and other requirements to the virus-infected patients and if there were any flying squads to check irregularities pertaining to diversion of remdesivir injections to black market and others, the state government’s counsel submitted that it had taken all measures suggested by the court earlier.
The court suggested to the state government to ensure proper cremation for those who succumbed to the Coronavirus. Later, it appointed senior advocate Y.V. Ravi Prasad as amicus curie to assist the court during the next hearing in the case and posted the next hearing to May 6. It directed the state government to submit a memo with details on the measures being taken to contain the spread of the virus.
In a separate development, the High Court completed hearing on a petition seeking cancellation of notification for conduct of MPTC/ZPTC polls issued by the State Election Commission (SEC) earlier. It heard both the parties and reserved the judgement.
A single judge bench headed by Justice M. Satyanarayana Murthy heard a batch of petitions filed by TD leader Varla Ramaiah and others seeking the cancellation of election notification on the grounds that the SEC failed to comply with the Supreme Court direction on complying with four weeks time before the issue of notification for conduct of polls. After hearing both the parties, the court reserved the judgment.
It may be mentioned that, based on a direction from the division bench, the SEC conducted MPTC/ZPTC polls and but has not taken up counting of the polled votes till now.
