Delhi High Court said that officials risked their lives during pandemic.
Judges do not live in ivory towers and have seen the condition of the national capital during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic, the Delhi High Court Wednesday observed while disagreeing with an argument that resources of the state remained unutilised due to the exclusive reservation of facilities for COVID-19 treatment of government officials and their families.
The court said that the submission of petitioner's counsel does not take into account the ground reality of the second wave of the pandemic.
"There was such a shortage of facilities including oxygen, medicines, hospital beds, oxygenated beds, ICUs, doctors and paramedical staff that there was no question of any facilities remaining unutilised," a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said.
The court said when there was a massive dearth of medical infrastructure during the second wave of the pandemic, government officials were risking their lives on the streets to manage the situation.
It said the state is obliged to provide medical facilities to all the citizens including those grinding wheels of the administration and when the pandemic was at its height, there was a greater need of governance since the fire of the pandemic was raging at its peak.
The bench said during the lockdown, while the common citizenry were in their homes, it was the government officers who were out on the streets to manage the situation and if such officers/ officials were to fall sick and were not to receive treatment of COVID-19, not only they but the entire citizenry of Delhi would have suffered.
"The wheels of administration in the NCT of Delhi would have come to a grinding halt without this much assurance to the officials that they will receive treatment otherwise they would not have been able to discharge their duties without fear. They would not have been able to give attention and focus with which they were expected to discharge their duties," the bench said.
"We are not living in ivory towers. We were seeing what was happening in the city during the second wave on a daily basis. Thousands of people were looking at the state for some relief," the bench said.