Fadnavis claims 1,000 deaths in city not recorded by BMC

Former chief minister and Leader of Opposition in the state government, Devendra Fadnavis has yet again raised a red flag over the Covid-19 related deaths in Mumbai.

Former chief minister and Leader of Opposition in the state government, Devendra Fadnavis has yet again raised a red flag over the Covid-19 related deaths in Mumbai. In a letter to chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray, which he also released to the media on Friday, Fadnavis alleged that as many as 1,000 coronavirus deaths that occurred outside hospitals have not been officially recorded yet as Covid-19 fatalities.

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“As per my information, in the last three and a half months, there are at least 1,000 Covid-19 deaths in Mumbai that have not yet been officially recorded. Ward officers or the concerned officials have not issued death certificates for these cases. So far, 450 such deaths have been identified in the preliminary compilation,” Fadnavis wrote.

“Ideally, such deaths must be compiled on that day or within 72 hours, but in this case, even after realising the delay of three months, figures are being compiled and recorded slowly,” he added.

Fadnavis alleged that authorities were releasing the death figures in phases in a bid to avoid a spike in Covid-19 deaths but such a strategy was wrong and could prove to be counter-productive for future analysis and assessment of the infection.

BMC commissioner Iqbal Chahal denied Fadnavis’ allegations, saying it was “not true” that BMC has not compiled or recorded 1,000 Covid deaths outside of hospitals.

“We gain nothing by hiding data on case fatalities. BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) has been transparent when it comes to compiling data so if there are any lacunae or shortcomings, we are working to plug it,” said a senior civic official, on condition of anonymity.

Last week, the state government added 1,328 Covid-19 deaths after a review of cases; these included 862 deaths from Mumbai. While Fadnavis and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had alleged that death statistics related to the virus were being manipulated, state and civic authorities said that this was part of the data cleaning and reconciliation process.

The state had given medical authorities till June 15 to complete this exercise. Fadnavis, on June 14, had alleged that the BMC had not reported 950-odd Covid-19 deaths.

At the time, Bhushan Gagrani, principal secretary, in charge of the Covid-19 control room, had told HT that there had been some negligence and mismatch in data, given the poor flow of information from private hospitals and poor record-keeping by the government.

He had said that after realising the lapses, the government had asked all district collectors and civic commissioners to reconcile the figures.