New Delhi: As the Capital continues to be stuck in a dangerous bottleneck of not being able to ramp up bed capacity for Covid-19 patients without the requisite and proportional increase in the supply of medical oxygen to the city, the Delhi High Court on Saturday nudged the Delhi government once again to strongly consider roping in the Indian Army to help set up large-scale field hospitals to address the immediate lack of resources in this current wave of the virus.
The matter came up when the bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli were hearing Covid-19 related matters on Saturday and Senior Advocate Krishnan Venugopal brought up the issue of bringing in the Army by asking the Delhi government to react to this suggestion.
Senior Advocate Rahul Mehra, appearing for the Delhi government, said that they were anyway in the process of building up a capacity of 15,000 additional beds and 1,200 oxygen beds but "for that, we would need an increase in the oxygen supply (to the city)". To this, Venugopal argued that the Delhi government seemed to be resisting the need to call in the Army.
When Mehra went on to defend his stance by saying beds were already being increased, the court asked, "But what's the harm in approaching the Army for help?" Mehra then said, "We are doing our bit. We are doing everything that we can."
The court continued, "If you request the Army, they would work in its own way. You will not have to run from here and there from oxygen. Army has its own ways of arranging. If you are only relying on oxygen, we are seeing the condition for the last 10 days." Justice Palli noted that the court had reminded the Delhi government to consider this request in the previous hearing as well.
However, Mehra continued along his line of argument, insisting that bed augmentation was being looked into at the highest level of the government.
At this point, Senior Advocate Venugopal interjected to say that the Centre had already directed the services to assist civil authorities and that the "Army would not resist in helping if asked for".
Even as the Delhi government rushed to highlight that the beds were already being built, Amicus Curiae Rajshekhar Rao started reading the direction issued by the Centre to the Army and Advocate Aditya N Prasad said, "When the Army comes in, it would bring in their own equipment. They would beg, borrow steel. They would never say no. They would die before saying no."
However, before moving on to immediate matters of arranging oxygen supply to hospitals in the city, Justice Sanghi noted that the efforts should be collaborative and Mehra agreed and said it does not have to be either/or. "We will do whatever we can," he said, before the court specifically asked the Delhi government to write a letter to the Army with respect to this aspect of dealing with the fourth wave of the pandemic in the Capital.