Delhi High Court: A Division Bench of D.N. Patel, CJ and Prateek Jalan, J., addressed a petition wherein the Court held that,
“the allegations against Death Audit Committee have no basis and thus we are not sitting in appeal against the reports published by them.”
Grievance ventilated in the present petition is about publication of incorrect data pertaining to number of deaths due to COVID-19 by GNCTD.
Standing Counsel, Rahul mehra submitted that certain Guidelines have been issued by the Central Government dated 15th March, 2020 and 10th May, 2020 in this regard and a three member Death Audit Committee has been constituted by GNCTD on 20th April, 2020.
Further, Death Audit Committee has been following the aforesaid guidelines of the Central Government in full letter and spirit and no arbitrariness or discrimination is being done by the respondents while publishing the data in question.
Bench on perusal of the above held that,
it appears that the whole case of the petitioner is based upon presumptions and surmises as the same has been filed on the basis of some newspaper reports without any proper research.
Court also stated that, there is no doubt that the members of the Committee are experts in their subject and field. There seems to be no arbitrariness or discrimination being done nor is there are any material to show false fabrication of data in question being published by the respondents.
Petition was dismissed with the following observations,
“We expect from the Death Audit Committee and the respondents that they will publish the data only after proper analysis of the data supplied by the Central Government run hospitals, State Government run hospitals and Private hospitals in Delhi.” [All India Lawyers’ Union v. GNCTD, 2020 SCC OnLine Del 602 , decided on 22-05-2020]