Nobody should be short of oxygen in third wave, says Delhi CM Kejriwal

A political battle broke out between Delhi’s AAP government and the BJP on Friday over an interim report by a subgroup under the Supreme Court-appointed panel to audit oxygen utilisation in the Capital.

A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) sparred over an interim report on Delhi’s oxygen requirement during the second Covid-19 wave, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal urged the central government to work together “so that no one is short of oxygen in the third wave”.

If your fight over oxygen is over, can we get back to work? Let’s make such a system together so that no one suffers due to lack of oxygen in the third wave, Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi on Saturday. (ANI file photo)

“If your fight over oxygen is over, can we get back to work? Let’s make such a system together so that no one suffers due to lack of oxygen in the third wave. In the second wave, people faced a severe shortage of medical oxygen. Now this should not happen in the third wave. If we fight amongst ourselves, then corona will win. If we fight together, the country will win,” Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi on Saturday.

A political battle broke out between Delhi’s AAP government and the BJP on Friday over an interim report by a subgroup under the Supreme Court-appointed panel to audit oxygen utilisation in the Capital. This, even as questions remained about whether this version of the report was meant for submission to the court, and whether everyone in the panel had signed off on it. The report said Delhi’s administrations and hospitals exaggerated the demand for medical oxygen, which the BJP drew on to attack the CM.

On Saturday, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia slammed the BJP-led central government and called it “Bharatiya Jhagda Party”. In a tweet in Hindi on Saturday, Sisodia said: “The leaders of Bharatiya Jhagda Party only know how to fight. They are concerned neither about [the availability of] oxygen nor about the third wave. When the third wave will hit the country, then they will move to some other state to fight elections [and] make people quarrel among each other. Once the election is over, they will again resume attacking and fighting with the elected governments in different states.”

The Delhi BJP, in its response, said the AAP leaders refuse to be held accountable for anything. “The problem with AAP leaders is that they refuse to be accountable. Ever since the report prepared by the SC-mandated committee highlighted how the Kejriwal government failed to handle the oxygen crisis in Delhi, the AAP leaders have been raising irrelevant issues to avoid a reply on the main issues pointed by the committee,” said Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor.

The report suggested there was “gross discrepancy” in recording the requirement of medical oxygen by 183 of Delhi’s hospitals, claiming that the government projected an oxygen demand of 1,140MT as opposed to the actual requirement of 209MT. It also assessed the oxygen demand in a meeting on May 13 as 290-400MT, at a time when representatives of the state government continued to seek 500MT of oxygen.

The Delhi government has said that the report was invalid, and its findings incorrect. In a tweet in Hindi on Friday, the Delhi CM said: “My crime — I fought for the breath of my two crore people. When you were doing an election rally, I was awake all night arranging for oxygen. I fought, pleaded to get oxygen for people. People have lost their loved ones due to lack of oxygen. Don’t call them liars, they are feeling so bad.”