The Delhi High Court threatens to put Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj in prison

The Delhi High Court cautioned the health secretary and minister of health that they would go to prison for disobeying court orders to pass legislation regulating clinical institutions. The court’s rebuke came on Thursday. During the proceedings, Health Secretary SB Deepak Kumar and Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj were informed by the high court that they must not have “large egos” since they are “servants of government.”.
The court had requested the presence of Bharadwaj and Kumar in February after reading an email claiming the minister had not been informed of developments regarding the Delhi Health Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Bill.

We find it concerning that the petitioner is drawing attention to the difficulties faced by the average person. He claims that the average person is suffering and that a variety of false and incorrect lab findings are being produced. But what’s really going on is your game of one-upmanship, both between the two of you and between the other groups. The court finds this to be intolerable. Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet PS Arora’s bench urged them not to engage in “brinkmanship,” saying instead that they needed to be sensible and make sure that the touts did not profit from the altercation between these two individuals.

The court said that it would ask a third party to manage matters or make an order regarding what has to be done if the minister and the secretary were unable to resolve the disagreements and were unable to handle the problems.

“You two will go to prison if you do this together. If this helps the average guy, we won’t think twice about putting you both in prison. Since you are both government employees and must make sure that the general public benefits, neither of you may have enormous egos. How are you spending your time? It said, “People are receiving inaccurate information about their blood samples.

The statements were made by the High Court during the hearing of a petition filed in 2018 by Bejon Kumar Misra, who was represented by attorney Shashank Deo Sudhi. Misra claimed that unlicensed diagnostic centres and laboratories were operating in the nation’s capital with untrained personnel and providing patients with inaccurate reports.

The High Court questioned why the Delhi Health Bill had not yet been sent to the Centre for approval, given that the Minister said it was completed in May 2022.

The Delhi government might think about putting the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010—a central government statute—into effect if this was going to take some time, the court observed.

The court became irritated with Bharadwaj’s plea, claiming that the government would benefit from the court’s indulgence in getting the law passed, saying, “You think we are pawns in this game and you will use this as a matter of strategy.” Cure this notion that you will utilise the justice system; we are not anyone’s puppets.

The petitioner had said in court that the city’s pathological labs are out of control and endanger the public’s safety.

The motion said, “Such illegal labs continue to mushroom in and around Delhi-NCT and it can be easily estimated that the total number of such illegal pathological and diagnostic labs can be anywhere between 20,000 and 25,000, and every street in the capital has such illegal pathological labs.”