On Thursday, the Supreme Court decided that it needed to intervene as the Covid-19 pandemic crisis claimed even more lives and India’s medi...
On Thursday, the Supreme Court decided that it needed to intervene as the Covid-19 pandemic crisis claimed even more lives and India’s medical resources were impossibly strained.
The bench headed by Chief Justice SA Bobde, who is set to retire on Friday, initiated suo moto proceedings to consider four critical problems relating to the response of the authorities to the pandemic: the supply of oxygen, the supply of essential drugs, the method and manner of vaccination and the state’s powers to declare lockdowns.
However, High Courts in several states have already started proceedings related to several of these problems.
While the chief justice indicated that some of the proceedings pending before the High Courts could be withdrawn and placed before the Supreme Court, Justice Ravindra Bhat told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that the court was not superseding the High Court proceedings “as of now”.
In the written order released later, the court said the High Courts have passed certain orders which may have the effect of “accelerating and prioritising the services to a certain set of people and slowing down the availability of these resources to certain other groups.”
Issuing notice to the Centre, states and parties who had approached the High Courts, the bench asked them to...
