Chennai: The Madras High Court has taken the Central Government by surprise for its alleged negligence in taking prompt action to curb the COVID-19 Pandemic epidemic and expressed surprise at what it has been doing for 14 months. Chief Justice Sanjeeb Banerjee said there was a need to work on expert advice, not on ad hoc basis.
When the Additional Solicitor General (ASG) R Sankaranarayanan told the court that the outbreak of the second wave was “unexpected”, the Chief Justice asked, “Why are we taking action now in April, when we had a full year?” The chief justice also questioned the price of vaccines and the alleged crash of an app designed to register people over the age of 18 scheduled for Saturday. To this, the ASG replied that he would file a reply on this tomorrow.
“We need to work on expert advice and not on an ad hoc basis,” the chief justice said. The first bench of Chief Justice Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamurthy heard on Thursday the issues of remedicivir vaccines, alleged shortage of beds, sending oxygen to other states.
The court took cognizance of the matter automatically on the basis of newspaper reports. Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government told the High Court on Thursday that there was no need to impose a lockdown on Saturday, a day before the counting of votes in the April 6 assembly elections in the state, as May 1 is already a holiday on May Day. . Earlier, the first bench had suggested to the Tamil Nadu government and the Puducherry administration to consider declaring a complete lockdown on May 1 and 2.
