They said the total death was 38. We will prove that it was misleading. The actual figure is a lot more. Several deaths have been tagged ‘owing to unknown fever’, says Partha Ghosh
After Calcutta High Court expressed its displeasure over the affidavit submitted by the Bengal government over dengue deaths, the state on Thursday revised the dengue toll in the state to 38 and claimed that the media was sensationalising the issue by creating a situation “out of nothing”.
Advocate General (AG) Kishore Dutta submitted before a division bench of Acting Chief Justice J Bhattacharya and Justice Arijit Banerjee that 23 people had died of the vector-borne disease in the state-run hospitals and another 15 in private facilities since January. He said the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed on the basis of newspaper reports only and that it was not clear whether Elisa test was performed on all those dead.
Justice Arijit Banerjee said dengue was a social menace and the state should tackle the problem. The court also observed that it was not satisfied with the data submitted by the state and asked how was the state so sure that private hospitals were not carrying out Elisa test.
Lawyer for the petitioner, Partha Ghosh claimed that on Friday they would prove that the figure of death put forward by the state was not true. “They have said the total death was 38. We will prove tomorrow that it was misleading. The actual figure is a lot more. Several deaths have been tagged death owing to ‘unknown fever’. People have the right to know how many lives have dengue claimed in the state. They have provided technical details which people are not interested in. They want to know how many people have actually died and what the state was doing to tackle the situation and to prevent a re-run of the thing next year,” he said.
Two BSF jawans have also died of dengue. A senior BSF official said while head constable V Bala Naik died on November 12, another, Abhay Kumar Singh died on Wednesday.
In another development, CPM MLA Sujan Chakraborty has been diagnosed of dengue and has been admitted to a private hospital off EM Bypass.
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