IMA VP lodges complaint against Baba Ramdev for mocking COVID patients and doctors
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Jalandhar: Taking strong exception to Baba Ramdev’s statements which mocked COVID-19 patients who have required oxygen support, Indian Medical Association (IMA) vice president Dr Navjot Singh Dahiya on Saturday lodged a complaint against the yoga guru at the Jalandhar police station and sought strict action against him.
In a video that has gone viral on the internet, Ramdev said that patients “just don’t know how to breathe properly” and are “spreading negativity” by complaining of a shortage of oxygen.
In his complaint, Dahiya – who made headlines recently when he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a ‘super spreader’ for holding election rallies during the pandemic – also accused Ramdev of using ‘defamatory and insulting language towards doctors’.
Dahiya demanded a high-level inquiry against Ramdev, saying a criminal case should be registered against him for creating panic regarding the treatment of COVID-19 patients and spreading propaganda to not get treated by doctors. The IMA vice president also said that Ramdev used defamatory and insulting language against the medical fraternity and has intentionally violated directions issued to treat COVID-19 patients.
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In his complaint to the Jalandhar commissioner of police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar, Dahiya also demanded action Acharya Balkrishna, the CEO of Patanjali Yogpeeth in Haridwar, and wrote:
“Baba Ramdev’s video surfaced on the internet and on the national news channels, in which he advised the COVID-19 patients to not to go to the hospitals for treatment but should cure the symptoms themselves by following his advice. Ramdev also stated in the video that if anyone is having deficiency in their oxygen levels, they should do ‘Anulom vilom Pranayama’ and ‘Kapalbhati Pranayama’. He gave advice to the COVID-19 patients against the advice/directions issued by the Government of India for the treatment of COVID-19 and in that way pushed the patients towards their deathbeds without any treatment from the hospital. The accused should be punished as per law.”
Dr Dahiya, who is an orthopedician mentioned Ramdev’s ‘advice’ clearly violated the directions issued by the government regarding the code of conduct and other orders passed by the relevant authorities. “In this way, Baba Ramdev is liable to be punished under the provision of Disaster Management Act of 2005 and Epidemic Disease Act of 1897,” he added.
The IMA vice president stated that Ramdev “hatched a conspiracy” to get COVID-19 patients admitted to the Patanjali Yogpeeth. He said Ramdev’s statements against the medical fraternity have the ability to erode people’s confidence in the government and health workers.
The complaint adds that in an interview with ABP News, Ramdev defamed doctors by stating that Remdesivir and other injections that are being used to treat COVID-19 patients lead to deaths.
“Baba Ramdev stated that the doctors intentionally give injection to kill patients and by doing so, he created panic in the public. Due to this, patients would not feel like coming to the hospitals for treatment, hence creating a problem for the government to overcome the situation,” Dahiya said.
Talking to The Wire, the doctor saw Ramdev’s statements as a clear attempt to promote ‘quackery’. “While the doctors are overwhelmed, the country’s healthcare system has collapsed. We are praying for doctors and MBBS students who have been put on COVID-19 duty to save lives and Baba Ramdev, instead of facilitating the medical fraternity with resources, is mocking them. Over 900 doctors have lost their lives so far working as frontline workers in the pandemic,” he said.
Dr Dahiya also appealed to religious and political leaders to support the medical fraternity during this humanitarian crisis. “Doctors are not vaids (quacks). And if quackery alone could save people from COVID-19, then there was definitely no need for the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to create international standards to tackle the pandemic,” he said.
The Jalandhar deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Gurmeet Singh said, “We received the complaint on Saturday and started the investigation to ascertain the source and authenticity of the video. An FIR will be lodged accordingly.” However, Dahiya said that if the police fail to file an FIR, he will file a court case.
The doctor also pointed out that in the past, Ramdev had falsely claimed to have produced an ‘evidence-based medicine’ for COVID-19. “Baba Ramdev and Balkrishna wrongly advertised that they have developed a medicine for the treatment of COVID-19. However, it is clear that till date, no medicine has been registered with the Government of India as well as any other related institution. In this way, both the accused cheated the public in order to get monetary benefit from them,” the complaint says.
The IMA vice president also said that the duo presented themselves as well-educated doctors and medical professionals in their “propaganda and advertisements” to treat COVID-19 patients. without any authority, license or professional degree. This violated the law of the land, he said.
India has so far reported 2.26 crore confirmed case of COVID-19, with more than 2.46 lakh people dying due to the disease according to official estimates. Experts say that the actual tally of infections and deaths is much higher than the official figures.
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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.
