Just days before 'exposé', govt ignored alert on bed scam

A week before BJP lawmakers “exposed” the Covid bed-blocking scam in the city, a senior BBMP official had alerted the state government to serious political interference in bed allotments. The government chose not to act.

The alert was sounded at a meeting held on April 25 by Chief Secretary P Ravi Kumar after BBMP officials carried out an inquiry in the Bommanahalli Zone. An FIR had been filed against Apollo Hospitals, Bannerghatta Road, where beds were blocked in the name of dead and discharged patients.

About 75 per cent of the beds are being blocked through political influence. From MPs and MLAs to former corporators and their right-hand men, everyone has been seeking beds. People with good oxygen saturation levels get ICU beds while mildly symptomatic patients are given ventilator beds, the official had said.

Following the revelation, the chief secretary directed the officers in charge of all BBMP zones to look into the matter.

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The real scam

A BBMP source said: “Less than 5 per cent of the beds are blocked for money. The real scam is being perpetrated by politicians and private hospitals.”

According to the source, complaining about politicians was tough but the case against hospitals gave them an opportunity to raise the matter. But nothing came out of it. “The chief secretary’s instructions were soon forgotten,” the source said.

On April 29, Rajender Kumar Kataria, the nodal officer for Bommanahalli, visited the zonal war room and found a person claiming to be an aide of the local MLA sitting there.

While rules state that only authorised personnel are allowed into the war room, this person claimed he was representing the MLA to help “our people” get the beds. The person was asked to leave or face prosecution. The next day, people claiming to be the followers of Bommanahalli MLA M Satish Reddy stormed the war room and manhandled an IAS probationary officer, according to a source in the war room.

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A staffer in the war room said he was witness to several beds being allotted to people with political influence within a day. “Usually, asymptomatic patients are advised home isolation by the war room doctors. But this rule was bent once the bed allocation team received phone calls from politicians,” the staffer added.

A senior official feared that a police investigation into the scam would only let the bigger culprits escape. “Sure, the investigation should catch those who made money out of this tragedy. But it must not deviate from the real scam,” he said.

The official offers a simple solution: except for seriously ill or critical Covid patients, all beds should be allotted through triaging. “Let doctors determine the priority of a patient’s treatment. There should be no room for any influence,” the official said.

BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta could not be reached for comment on the matter.