Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on 3 March 2025 hit out at the previous AAP government for making city hospitals sick and using ghost patients for misappropriating funds, while failing to fill vacancies of doctors and nurses. Concluding the discussion on Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Performance Audit on ‘Public Health Infrastructure & Management of Health services’, CM Gupta hit out at the Mohalla Clinic scheme of the AAP government saying, “Everything related to Mohalla Clinics was fake – medicine, staff and test – but only one thing was real and that was payment.”
The Opposition members walked out of the House as she enlisted failures of the AAP government and highlighted that 234 posts of duty medical officers are vacant, over 2,000 nursing posts are vacant and 2,796 posts of paramedic posts are vacant. She also hit out at wasteful expenditure under the AAP government, saying the godowns of the hospital are full of PPE kits, masks, oxygen cylinders and other equipment but are lying unused. “During Covid, one mask costing ₹10 was bought for ₹150 to swindle money,” she said, referring to the findings of the CAG report. CM Gupta slammed the mismanagement under the AAP government, saying that 24 hospital projects which were launched under the previous regime could not be completed. “Many of the projects’ costs have been doubled and till now these are far from complete,” she said.
Even Arvind Kejriwal also accepted his failure in delivering on promises, including cleaning the Yamuna and providing clean water. “I am happy that in the end Kejriwal ended up accepting his failures,” she said. CM Gupta said the Opposition members have been shaken by just the two CAG reports that have been tabled in the House. “They don’t have the courage to face the criticism,” she said. Earlier, Tilak Nagar legislator Jarnail Singh was ordered to be marshalled out of the House for disrupting CM Gupta’s address with slogan shouting.
Health Minister Pankaj Kumar Singh lamented the AAP government for not utilising fully the funds provided by the Centre during Covid. He read out a CAG observation which said, “Under Emergency Covid Response Plan, GNCTD received total funds of ₹787.91 crore (Lump sum amount of ₹24.67 crore, ₹292.22 crore in first phase and ₹471.02 crore in the second phase) from Government of India. Out of this, GNCTD utilised only ₹542.84 crore (November 2021).” “I feel sorry and ashamed to share the dark deeds of the previous government. It is painful to recall how a government indulged in such gross negligence,” he said. “In the coming days we will introduce a Hospital Information Management System (HIMS) under which a unique patient ID will be allotted each patient. The system will make treatment easy as all the information will be available online,” he said.
Highlighting shortcomings in the functioning of AAP government’s health department during Covid, procurement of substandard drugs, failure to give care to pregnant women, shortage of staff and underutilisation of dialysis machines, the Health Minister cited several paras from the CAG report during the discussion. Referring to a Delhi High Court’s direction, he said that the AAP government was supposed to start radiological diagnosis services from November 2024 but it failed to do so. “I want to assure the people that our government is committed to comply with the High Court order of war footing,” he said.
-IANS
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