Hospitals directed no COVID patient be refused admission for lack of valid ID, Centre tells SC
New Delhi: All central and state government hospitals managing COVID patients have been directed to ensure that no patient is refused admission due to lack of a valid identity card and a positive test report for coronavirus, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.
In an affidavit on the points raised by the top court, the Centre submitted that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has intimated all state governments regarding the policy of setting up three-tier Health infrastructure for appropriate management of suspect/ confirmed COVID-19 cases.
As the vaccination of the entire country is not possible in one stretch due to the very suddenness of the pandemic and limited availability of vaccine doses, the vulnerability is the prime consideration, it said.
The Centre's affidavit was submitted late Sunday night in a suo motu case by the apex court for ensuring essential supplies and services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It further said that the guidance document issued in this regard on April 7, 2020, envisages/mandates setting up of COVID Care Centre (CCC) for mild cases and these have been set up in hostels, hotels, schools, stadiums and lodges, both public and private.
"Functional hospitals like Community Health Centres (CHCs), etc, which may be handling regular, non-COVID cases may also be designated as COVID Care Centers as a last resort. Dedicated COVID Health Centre (DCHC) that shall offer care for all cases that have been clinically assigned as moderate.
"These should either be a full hospital or a separate block in a hospital with preferably separate entry/exit/zoning. Private hospitals may also be designated as COVID Dedicated Health Centres. These hospitals would have beds with assured Oxygen support," the Centre said.
It said that a dedicated COVID hospital shall offer comprehensive care primarily for those who have been clinically assigned as severe.
"These hospitals should either be a full hospital or a separate block in a hospital with preferably separate entry/exit. Private hospitals may also be designated as COVID Dedicated Hospitals. These hospitals would have fully equipped ICUs, Ventilators and beds with assured Oxygen support," it said.
The Centre further said: "It is submitted that the Central Government has also directed that the hospitals under the Central Government, State Governments and Union territory administrations including private hospitals (in States and UTs) managing COVID patients shall ensure -- Requirement of a positive test for COVID-19 virus is not mandatory for admission to a COVID health facility if clinically hospitalisation is necessary otherwise.
"A suspect case shall be admitted to the suspect ward of CCC, DCHC or DHC as the case may be.
No Patient will be refused services on any count. This includes medications such as oxygen or essential drugs even if the patient belongs to a different city. No patient shall be refused admission on the ground that he/she is not able to produce a valid identity card that does not belong to the city where the hospital is located."
The government told the apex court that admissions to the hospital must be based on need and it should be ensured that beds are not occupied by persons who do not need hospitalisation.
"The Chief Secretaries of States/Union Territories have been requested to issue circulars, incorporating the above directions within three days, which shall be in force till replaced by an appropriate uniform policy.
"The Centre also submitted that Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has written to all the Additional Chief Secretary/Principal Secretary Health/Medical education of all States and UTs, to provide for extraordinary measures to augment the need of medical staff in the country," the bench said.
In view of the need for increasing the availability of trained human resources to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the guidelines and directions have been issued in consultation with the National Medical Commission and the Indian Nursing Council, the Centre said.
"It is submitted that depending upon the progress in this direction, the Central Government shall consider other incentives without compromising with the merits which can never be compromised in the field of medicine," it said.
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
