Act fast on plea to allow kidney transplant: HC

The Karnataka High Court has directed the chairman of the authorisation committee for transplantation of human organs, K C General Hospital, to consider the application of the petitioner with regard to her kidney transplantation within 24 hours of receiving the application and dispose of the same expeditiously.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Varsha Sharma, who has moved the court seeking directions to quash the communication directing the kidney transplant to be kept on hold and to grant her the permission to donate her kidney and allow her to undergo the transplantation surgery at the earliest.

The petitioner wanted to donate her kidney to Colonel Pankaj Bhargava, who is presently serving in Pune. However, the commissioner of health and family welfare services issued a communication dated April 10, without jurisdiction, directing the chairman of of the committee and the hospital authorities concerned to keep the transplant on hold.

Varsha says she is close to the family of Bhargava since the 1990s as they have stood by her during her difficult times, including when she lost her parents.

The petitioner says she had inherited a residential house with her two sisters at Vidyut Nagar, Jaipur. She says her elder sister and her husband are greedy, forced her to destroy the said will and gift her share to her (sister's) children.

However, she refused to bow down to their demands. Now that the organ transplant procedure has reached its penultimate stage, her elder sister's family is using their clout with a principal secretary in Maharashtra to stall the transplantation process, as a last effort to push the petitioner to do their bidding.

Varsha says she considers Bhargava as her brother. The colonel had suffered a renal failure and is undergoing regular dialysis and a kidney transplant is his only chance of survival.

The petitioner has sought for directions to the chief secretary to conduct an enquiry of the officers responsible for sending the communication and take required action.