• Gaurav Kapoor

The citizens of Uttar Pradesh were deprived of Oxygen, the Elixir of Life, when the second wave of Covid-19 emerged in India. On February 3, the Chief Minister of the state Yogi Adityanath made a statement that the situation was completely under control. As of May 16, more than 8 lakh new Covid-19 cases have been added to the state and notably, this is just the government data. This data excludes those who were never tested, or died of scarcity of oxygen, hospitals, drugs, ambulances, or lung failure, and many other causes. This may be just another statistical data for the government, but these are real people who were sons, daughters, friends, fathers, mothers, wives and husbands. They were an entire world to someone.

People lost the sense of sanctity associated with life and death due to utter mismanagement of the government. The lack of testing in small towns and villages of UP could not hide the spiking number Covid cases. Dainik Bhaskar had reported more than 2000 people dead from 27 districts of Uttar Pradesh at a distance of 1140 kilometers on the banks of the Ganges River.

A problem can be resolved only if you accept that there is a problem. The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh refused to accept that there existed a problem and was constantly engaged in image management. On April 26, 2021, CM Adityanath said that there was no lack of oxygen in any private or government Covid hospital. But before and after that claim, the social media was filled with people seeking help to find oxygen. The government lodged an FIR to hide the truth instead of helping its people. An FIR has also been registered against the person who sought oxygen for his grandfather in Amethi and the person who distributed free oxygen cylinders in Jaunpur. If the government had been so confident of its claims about oxygen, then why did it not help the needy instead of suppressing the voices seeking help? The intention of the BJP government was crystal clear. Both, the help-seeker as well as the help-provider are criminals. CM Adityanath also threatened them with the National Security Act, 1980 and confiscated their property because according to him, seeking help is a serious crime. This was a gross misuse of the powers of the state.

The BJP government did not stop here. The government passed random orders where the patient had to run from one office to another to take the basic medicines needed to treat corona. Covid +ve reports were needed for hospitalization, chief medical officers were required to administer injections such as Remdesivir and Tocilizumab. By passing these orders, the BJP government created obstacles for the patients and their families, who were seen begging and pleading with the authorities for the survival of their loved ones.

There have been over 17,000 deaths in Uttar Pradesh due to Covid, but it is clear that these figures cannot be relied upon. The cremation grounds of various cities of the state tell an entirely different story. In Lucknow, the government showed only 124 deaths from April 8-15, while the figures in the crematoriums in the city showed 400 deaths. In Kanpur, data collected from the Bhaironghat and Bhagwat ghat cremation ghats showed that 462 bodies were burnt from April 19 to April 24, which highly exceeds the official figure of 66 deaths in the entire district in a week. On April 16 and 17, 50 bodies arrived at the crematorium in Agra, but the District Municipal Commissioner said that only 10 bodies arrived. In Jhansi, the state government released figures of just seven deaths in the district till April 18, but the bodies of Covid patients found at the crematoriums were four times as many.

At Surajkund crematorium in Meerut, more than 250 cremations of those who died due to Covid between April 19 and April 30 were recorded, but according to the Adityanath government, only 36 people died due to Covid in Meerut during the same period.

The figures from the Harishchandra crematorium in Varanasi, the Manikarnika crematorium and other cemeteries show that at least 50 per cent of deaths caused by the second wave of Covid-19 did not make it to Uttar Pradesh’s official records. Please note that Varanasi is the Parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. According to the date of the National Health Mission, in rural Uttar Pradesh, in 2020, the target of Primary Health Center and collective Health Center fell short by 51%, which makes Uttar Pradesh one of the three lowest-ranking states in the health system. According to the Reserve Bank of India, in 2020, UP spent more than Rs. 1,000 per capita on health, which is less than one-third of the amount spent by Jammu and Kashmir and North-Eastern states and less than even half of the amount spent by Kerala.

UP needs 20,333 beds with oxygen support, but it has only 3,761 beds. As predicted by a committee headed by NITI Aayog member VK Paul, it faces a shortage of more than 3,000 oxygen beds and more than 1,500 ventilators. If the UP government does not take immediate steps on a war-footing, then the people of UP have got a lot more to suffer. The BJP government might be able to hide data and engage in image-management but,it will never be able to hide the dead bodies or suppress the cries for help.

(Gaurav Kapoor is the Chairman of the Research Department of Uttar Pradesh Congress and his family has lived in Varanasi since 1851.)