West Bengal: CM Mamata Banerjee slams Centre over ‘few and faulty’ kits

KOLKATA: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday blamed the Centre for supplying “faulty” and an inadequate number of Covid-19 testing kits and politicising the fight against the virus even as the state administration, through chief secretary Rajiva Sinha, tempered its initial defiance to two central teams’ visit and assured Delhi of cooperation in “the implementation of orders under the Disaster Management Act”.
Banerjee went on the offensive, trying to pin the Centre down for sending “faulty test kits” to Bengal when tests were of “prime importance to save lives”. “Some people found fault with Bengal’s low test numbers. They have talked big and sent advisories and teams to find out the ground reality here,” she said. “But the facts are different. First, the Centre did not provide us with adequate testing kits. Then it withdrew all three types of kits it had sent to Bengal because they were faulty,” she said, adding that 10,000 rapid-test kits and 2,500 Real Time-PCR kits were withdrawn.

“But we have still performed 7,037 tests because we did not depend solely on central agencies. We placed our own orders to get kits,” she said, besides referring to the Union government’s decision to send two central teams to monitor lockdown measures in the middle of the state’s fight against the pandemic. “We are fighting Covid-19, they (the Centre) are fighting us,” Banerjee said during her stay-safe-stay-home tour of the city — the second in two days — on Wednesday.
The CM’s tough response came hours after Union government additional secretary and the Kolkata central team’s leader, Apurva Chandra, sent an elaborate questionnaire on Bengal’s Covid-19 management to state chief secretary Rajiva Sinha.
Chandra requested a detailed presentation by health department officials and sought to know whether testing numbers were adequate. The letter also asked whether the testing facilities were being used in full and wanted an update on masks and other PPE for healthcare workers, the number of Covid-19 hospitals and quarantine centres and the number of surveillance teams set up to enforce the lockdown.
Sinha: Teams arrived without consultation
Apurva Chandra marked a copy of the letter to Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla.
Bengal chief secretary Rajiva Sinha, in his reply, chose not to escalate the situation and promised compliance with the Centre’s orders and Supreme Court directives on the pandemic, though there was a reference to the Centre’s decision to send the two teams — one for north and another for south Bengal — without prior consultation with the state. “Teams arrived without prior consultation and, therefore, there was neither opportunity to provide logistical support as envisaged in the order nor did the teams ask for any help,” he said.
Mamata Banerjee also made a passing reference to Bhalla’s letter to Sinha: “A letter has been sent to us citing SC directives. The apex court had also passed a directive against spreading of fake news.” Bengal has repeatedly accused BJP leaders of spreading fake news.
Sinha used a major portion of his reply to Bhalla to explain how Bengal was following the lockdown guidelines and cooperating with the central teams. He said he was in touch with central team leaders Chandra and Vineet Joshi and had apprised them of all state measures to contain the infection’s spread. He also assured full compliance with the Centre’s orders in accordance with the Disaster Management Act and SC directives.
The two central teams, one in Kolkata and the other in Siliguri, did not move out of their base camps on Wednesday. The Siliguri team led by additional secretary Joshi met Jalpaiguri divisional commissioner Ajit Bardhan, who briefed it on the situation in north Bengal and provided the data on Covid-19 cases, including deaths. “We have sent our divisional commissioner to Siliguri to provide the team all the data,” Sinha said. The Kolkata team may go on spot visits outside the state capital on Thursday.