Sub-group's calculations were doubted by Max Dir, Delhi govt

New Delhi: As the Centre's affidavit in the Supreme Court, with an "interim report" on Delhi's oxygen audit, became the hot-button issue over which the BJP and the AAP dispensation traded barbs on Friday, a perusal of the entire-163-page affidavit with annexures, shows that the Delhi government and Dr Sandeep Budhiraja, Medical Director of Max Healthcare had repeatedly during the sub-group's deliberations pointed out that its formula for calculating oxygen requirement was not accurate, despite which the committee went ahead with publishing its conclusions.

The sub-group, as constituted by the Supreme Court, included Dr Budhiraja, one Joint Secretary level officer of the Central government and one Joint Secretary level officer of the Delhi government and AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria. However, in the unsigned 23-page "interim report", five people are cited as members of the group headed by Dr Guleria - the addition being that of the Controller of Explosives, PESO.

According to annexures that show the Delhi government's contention with the sub-group's method of working, several communications were sent by officials of the Delhi government after almost each of the meetings, seeking that corrections be made about the way the Delhi government's position had been presented in the draft minutes.

In fact, one OSD in the Health Department had forwarded a note approved by the Chief Secretary on the Delhi government's comments on the happenings of a key meeting on May 13. The OSD had written the following day that meeting minutes were not yet received. This meeting was crucial as the "interim report" claims this is when they discovered the "inflation" of oxygen consumption. Curiously, two pages of the meeting minutes from this day are missing from the affidavit.

The main bone of contention has been the proforma created by the sub-group to collect data on hospitalisation. The Delhi government maintained that the data had been collected as asked but there were some discrepancies and so this would not reflect the actual requirement. It had offered to present more accurate data reported by hospitals themselves. Moreover, the Delhi government also noted in its dissent notes to several of the meeting minutes that the data collected by the sub-group was for 214 hospitals, which is not the total number of hospitals in Delhi and that it must also account for refilling stations, patients in home isolation.

Significantly, both the Delhi government's Principle (Home) Secretary and Dr Budhiraja chose not to attend at least one of the key meetings after having cited that they were not receiving the minutes of the previous meetings. It was in this meeting, skipped by both, on May 18, that the group writes that it had agreed that Delhi's requirement under the erstwhile circumstances would be enough at around 400 MT. At this meeting, PESO presented its findings too.

Moreover, in communication to all members of the sub-group, Dr Budhiraja had also indicated that the oxygen requirement calculation based on data collected by the sub-group would not reflect the real requirement as it had errors and several parameters were not accounted for in the data.

The Delhi government, in its observations on the "interim report", said that the group had arrived at the conclusion that Delhi's requirement was in the range of 280-400MT arbitrarily.

Both the Delhi government and Dr Budhiraja maintained that the city should get at least 500MT oxygen daily.