16 Muslim Covid warriors reinstated

Bengaluru: The 16 Muslim Covid warriors who were named by Bengaluru south member of parliament, Tejasvi Surya in connection with the “bribe for bed scam” were reinstated back into their parent company on the instructions of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), on Monday

Bengaluru: The 16 Muslim Covid warriors who were named by Bengaluru south member of parliament, Tejasvi Surya in connection with the “bribe for bed scam” were reinstated back into their parent company on the instructions of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), on Monday.

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Special BBMP chief (south zone) Thulasi Maddineni however said that only 11 out of the 16 had asked for their suspension to be withdrawn and wanted to be employed again, while the others have not approached the BBMP.

The developments come days after Surya and three other BJP legislators from Bengaluru--Ravi Subramanya, Uday Garudachar and Satish Reddy--barged into the BBMP war room in the south zone and questioned how these 16 were hired by the agency.

Bengaluru police official said that no investigation has been ordered against these men either.

Hours after BBMP’s decision, Surya, while addressing the media said that it was the BBMP that had prepared the list to dismiss or relocate. When Hindustan Times asked Surya why the 16 people were reinstated by BBMP, when they were part of the list of people to be dismissed, Surya shrugged his shoulders without an answer.

When asked why he read out the names without knowing why such a list, which had 16 of the 19 Muslim employees of the war rooms, was made Surya said: “The list was given… I questioned how they were appointed and what is the process of appointing.”

To the question on why such a list was made in the first place, Surya said: “You should ask the officers who made it.”

The BJP MP further said that the MLA who accompanied him and claimed that the 16 men on the list were responsible for the ‘bribe for bed scam’, should be held accountable for his action and his words alone. He also made it clear that he has not apologised to any of the 16 Muslim employees.

Changes made to bed booking system

Meanwhile, earlier in the press conference, Surya announced four major changes in the BBMP bed booking systems. Following the expose by the MP, Bengaluru police had launched an investigation in which at least seven people have been arrested so far. Even on Monday, police arrested two men Sudhir and Venkoba Rao, who are accused of blocking beds and taking money to allocate it to patients.

Surya said that major changes that were incorporated with the help of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani were included such as instant SMS alert to a patient after a bed is booked, disabling of ‘manual unblock’ option, reducing reservation time of a hospital bed from 10 hours to 4 hours and two-factor authenticated person-specific logins.

“Manual unblocking of beds, which was the biggest loophole used by miscreants to make proxy bookings, is now disabled. If a patient needs to be shifted to a different hospital, then a rebooking can be done. Another major reform is the instant SMS alerts to patients with the details of the beds booked in their name. This will henceforth prevent beds being booked in patients’ names without their knowledge,” he said.

He also added that the team felt that the auto-unblock time of a bed, where a bed will be automatically unbooked if a patient does not report for hospital admission for 10 hours, is too long. “This is now reduced from 10 hours to 4 hours, meaning a hospital bed booked under your name is valid only for 4 hours with an option to re-block in exceptional circumstances,” Surya said.

“Another important change is in the war rooms booking beds. We have also activated two-factor authenticated person-specific logins for more accountability. Earlier, war rooms had generic logins with common usernames used by multiple people. Bookings will now be tagged to individuals, and this will help in bringing transparency as every booking is tagged to one specific person,” he added.

Several more reforms like a digital queuing system for allocation of beds, shortening of reservation time of a bed and an Aadhaar-enabled biometric or OTP verification during admission are in the pipeline.