'Water has gone above head': Delhi High Court to Centre on Oxygen crisis

"We direct the Centre to ensure that Delhi receives its 490MT oxygen supply today by whatever means," the Division Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli said while hearing a batch of petitions seeking the court's intervention in the mismanagement of Covid-19 pandemic, according to a Bar and Bench report.

Telling the Centre that Delhi is not an industrial state and thus, does not have cryogenic tankers to transport the gas, the court held it responsible for arranging the tankers.

"It falls on the Central government to arrange tankers ..(else) it only remains a paper allocation. The allocation to Delhi has been in force from April 20 and not for a single day Delhi has received allocated supply," the court maintained.

The court told the Centre if the order is not complied with, the authorities/Secretary will have to be present before it.

We may even consider issuing contempt proceedings, the Court added.

When the Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma sought to intervene, the Court referring to the death of eight people, including a doctor, in Delhi's Batra Hospital where oxygen supply stopped for 80 minutes, said, "Water has gone above the head. You have to arrange everything now. You have made the allocations. You have to fulfil it. Eight lives have been lost. We can't shut our eyes to it."

Request by the Additional Solicitor General to adjourn the hearing by half an hour to allow the officers explain the position and not say anything on the aspect of contempt was turned down.

"Will we shut our eyes to people dying in Delhi?..Enough is enough..who is asking for a dime more than allocated?..Don't do this, Don't do that. We don't appreciate this. This is a new way of arguing that we are seeing," it stated.

 Advocate Rahul Mehra, representing the Delhi government, said that Delhi requires 700 MT of oxygen everyday while the allocated oxygen was 490MT, out of this the suppliers have made a voluntary commitment of 445 MT.

Taking note of the problems on the supply side, the Court ordered all liquid medical oxygen suppliers to be present before it through their counsel on every day of hearing.