HC disposes of pleas challenging Delhi govt's decision on hospitals for Delhi residents

Delhi High Court on Tuesday disposed of with certain directions a bunch of petitions challenging Arvind Kejriwal government's decision to reserve beds in Delhi government-run and private hospitals exclusively for the residents of the national capital.

A division bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan disposed of the petitions as they became infructuous after the Lieutenant Governor's intervention in the matter.

In a setback for Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Lieutenant Governor l Baijal had yesterday overruled his decision to reserve the beds on Delhi government-run and private hospitals exclusively for the treatment of residents of the national capital.

The High Court directed the Chief Secretary of the Delhi government to consider the issues related to the homeless mentally ill persons within a time-bound manner. This direction came on a petition filed by advocate and mental health activist Gaurav Kumar Bansal seeking quashing of the order concerned.

Bansal submitted before the court that there are around 2 lakh homeless mentally ill persons in the national capital and many of these are facing extreme hardship amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The counsel on another petition, moved by a two-year-old kid, seeking testing of asymptomatic people submitted that there were other grievances like availability of ventilators, etc in the matter that needs to be addressed.

After hearing the arguments, Delhi High Court also asked the expert committee, set up by the Delhi government on COVID-19, to treat the plea as a representation and take the decision as early as possible in accordance with the law.

One of the petitions, filed by advocates Abhay Gupta and Prashant Arora in the matter, claimed the order is in violation of the basic fundamental right to health of the public at large including but not limited to Article 14 and 21.

( With inputs from ANI )