Delhi L-G rights a Kejriwal wrong

Delhi Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal has done well to overrule the AAP government’s decision to reserve treatment in the state government’s hospitals and select private hospitals only for residents of Delhi. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had announced that all the beds in Delhi’s hospitals are needed to cater to the needs of the patients from the city and will not be available to those from outside the state. He had also said that the decision was taken on the basis of a survey conducted among residents which showed support for limiting the city’s hospitals to its residents. The government may have thought that it was a practical solution to the problem of overcrowding of hospitals, with Covid-19 cases fast increasing in Delhi. But it was a wrong and unfair decision and amounted to discrimination against those who belong to other states but live in Delhi or travel there.

When all citizens have the right to live and work in any part of the country, they should also be able to enjoy the rights related to health, entertainment and other areas of life anywhere without discrimination. The Delhi government said that the central government hospitals in Delhi would be open to people from other states, but the division of the health facilities in a state for separate use by residents and outsiders was questionable. Being the national capital and a city where people from other states regularly go for work and business Delhi has a large floating population.
It has reopened its borders, and many establishments like shopping malls and restaurants have reopened.
So, the movement of people to Delhi is set to increase in the coming days, and many of them were bound to suffer if the government’s health facilities were denied to them.

Delhi is among the most affected states in the country, and with over 1,000 new cases every day, it has the highest per capita Covid-19 infection. From the beginning, it has slipped in containment of the disease for various reasons and has suffered from policy instability and wrong strategies. The decision to limit health treatment only to the residents of Delhi could only be a variation of the “sons of the soil’’ policy, adapted to Covid-19 circumstances. Kejriwal has himself said that at any given time, 60-70% of the patients in Delhi’s hospitals are from other states. So, the decision would have hit many people hard. It would also have set a bad precedent for other states.