Telangana High Court closes 21 PILs with dip in Covid cases

Hyderabad: In a major relief to the Telangana State government, the division bench comprising Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Bollam Vijaysen Reddy on Thursday closed a batch of 21 Public Interest Litigations out of 24 filed, seeking a series of directions to the State government to take measures to contain rampant spread of Covid-19 in the State.

Keeping aside three PILs out of 24, the CJ bench closed the PILs in view of rollout of vaccine for Covid-19 and a drastic decrease in positive cases across the State. However, the court hinted that it would monitor further efforts of the government in containing Covid-19 spread, number of tests conducted etc.

When one of the counsels, Chikkudu Prabhakar, tried to intervene and informed the court that the State government had not conducted 50,000 tests a day as directed by the High Court, Chief Justice Hima Kohli came down heavily on him and said that a PIL should not be converted into adversarial litigation. "Rather, this batch of PILs is filed to ensure that the State is doing its best to tackle this pandemic and at the end of the day, we are convinced that the situation is under control," she said.

The court kept three PILs open which deal with private hospitals maintain transparency during treatment and billing, to reserve 50% of beds for the poor Covid-19 patients and to upgrade infrastructure in all PHCs and appoint staff.

The Chief Justice stated that to further monitor the steps of the State government in curtailing further spread of Covid-19, it directed the State government to file an affidavit. Court said the statement should contain number of Covid-19 tests that would be conducted between January 25 and February 1 indicating district-wise tests and RTPCR tests conducted with break up, the total number of Sero Surveillance conducted since June 2020 till date and turnaround time for receiving the reports of the RTPCR and feedback received.

Chief Justice Kohli further directed the Advocate General Banda Shivananda Prasad to give a ground report on the second strain of Covid-19 brought by the travelers from the UK. Advocate General informed the bench that four new strains were found and all the carriers of this new strain were identified, isolated and treated. The court directed the State government to file a report on the directions cited on or before February 19, and adjourned the matter to January 25 for further hearing.