COVID-19: Madhya Pradesh HC appeals states to provide green corridors for oxygen tankers

To ensure timely delivery of oxygen tankers, the Madhya Pradesh High Court on Friday requested all the states to provide green corridors to liquid medical oxygen tankers. The court was talking about the tankers transported from state to state. The bench comprising of Chief Justice Mohammad Rafiq and Justice Atul Sreedharan further ordered the state governments, police, and transport authorities for green corridors so that COVID-19 patients face no difficulty. 

The court was hearing a suo moto writ petition and a bunch of similar petitions that stated the increasing panic of COVID-19 in the state and negligence of state authorities in the matter. The decision comes after an incident of oxygen tanker of Madhya Pradesh was diverted to Uttar Pradesh. The judiciary marked that the Central Government has taken serious note of the matter. The Additional Solicitor General of India (ASG) further submitted that the Central Government will have to make sure that no such incident takes place in the future. With this, the ASG also informed that the Union of India has passed a direction stating free movement of oxygen tankers.

'Situation on ground different than reports'

While announcing orders on the matter, the court warned that the situation on ground is different than that in the reports submitted by the state governments. Moreover, the court took a serious note of media reports highlighting deaths due to lack of oxygen and added that even state governments had not made any efforts to stop this. 'It is heartbreaking that patients are dying due to lack of oxygen,' added the MP High Court.

Deaths due to oxygen shortage

Several reports of deaths due to a shortage of oxygen have come to light. On Saturday, 12 patients in Delhi's Batra hospital died due to lack of oxygen. Earlier, reports had come from Haryana, however, an investigation on the allegations is going on. Maximum complaints of patients losing lives due to no oxygen have come from Delhi. Meanwhile, the government has ramped up the oxygen supply of the country to make sure every state receives maximum stock of life-saving equipment.