Delhi asked for four times more oxygen than it needed: Supreme Court panel

New Delhi, Dt

At a time when the second wave of the Corona epidemic was at its peak, there was a severe shortage of oxygen across the country, including Delhi. However, the apex court committee has now said that the Delhi government had demanded four times more oxygen than it needed when there was a nationwide outcry over oxygen shortages. The Kejriwal government is embroiled in this issue. The committee shocked the apex court by saying that 18 states may have faced oxygen crisis due to the Delhi government's oversupply of oxygen. The supply chain was disrupted as Delhi did not have the facility to store more oxygen.

The Supreme Court had constituted an audit team to audit the consumption of oxygen in hospitals in the national capital, Delhi, during the second wave of Corona, when the issue of oxygen shortage was raging across the country, especially in the national capital. The audit team, in a report to the Supreme Court, said that the allocation of oxygen to the states has been severely hampered. According to the fixed formula based on the capacity of the bed, Delhi needed 4 metric tonnes of oxygen, but the Delhi government claimed to have consumed 1,150 metric tonnes of oxygen, which was four times more than the requirement.

The five-member panel, chaired by AIIMS director Randeep Gularia, said the Delhi government had claimed on April 30 to allocate 500 MT of medical grade oxygen using a "wrong formula". The team formed by the apex court on May 6 to conduct audit proceedings for Delhi's health infrastructure and oxygen allocation included AIIMS director Randeep Guleria, Max Healthcare's Sandeep Budhiraja and two IAS officers from the central and state governments.

The panel report said that four model hospitals in Delhi, Singhal Hospital, Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital, ESIC Model Hospital and Lifer Hospital claimed very high oxygen consumption despite having very few beds. The result was misinformation that the whole state was in dire need of oxygen. According to the panel, there was a huge discrepancy in the data collected by the NCT Delhi government. It is not yet clear on what basis the Delhi government had sought 300 MT of oxygen in the Supreme Court.

The panel's interim report is part of a 16-page report by the National Task Force, which said the Indian government had also used the wrong formula and claimed too much oxygen consumption on April 30. According to the report, some hospitals could not distinguish between KL (kiloliter) and MT (metric ton). According to the report, Delhi had a very large supply of liquid medical oxygen when it did not have the facility to store these LMOs. As a result he told suppliers to keep oxygen reserves in their own plants. Several tankers of oxygen stood outside hospitals in Delhi for hours to evacuate. As a result, the supply chain was disrupted.

The Petroleum and Oxygen Safety Organization (PESO) told a team formed by the Supreme Court that the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCTD) had more oxygen than it needed, which affected the supply of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) to other states. Had Delhi's demand been met, the nationally generated oxygen crisis would have escalated.