NEW DELHI: The politics around Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Mohalla clinic is heating up as reports from the regular monitoring done on the direction of Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor (LG) has found fraudulent practices being prevalent in the government clinics runned by the state government.
The reports allegedly claim fraudulent practices to be prevalent in the lab tests being carried out in the name of patients visiting Delhi Government Hospitals and Mohalla Clinics. BJP alleges a scam running to 100s of crores.
Report on outsourced lab tests done at Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics makes several startling revelations. It states that fake lab tests are being done on ghost patients in clinics while payments are made to private labs against lakhs of fake tests.
It also claims that doctors at the Clinics marked attendance through pre-recorded videos and unauthorised or non-medical staff prescribed tests and medicines to patients. It says that fake or non-existent mobile numbers are used to mark the entry of patients.
Further, this scam also raises questions over the same model being followed in Punjab, where the AAP government is in power, according to the report. LG Saxena, who answers to the BJP led Union government, has recommended a CBI enquiry in the matter.
Meanwhile, AAP has welcomed the ongoing investigations, asserting that it validates their earlier concerns. Delhi’s Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj, pinned the accountability on the bureaucracy, highlighting that several issues had been raised by him in a previous press conference.
Bharadwaj pointed out the domain of the health department, which is under the supervision of LG VK Saxena, in overseeing matters such as staff attendance at Mohalla Clinics and the standard of medicines. He said, “As far as the health department is concerned, whether it’s the attendance of staff at Mohalla Clinics or the quality of medicines, these issues are to be monitored by health department officials. And overall, DGHS looks into this with the health secretary at the top of its hierarchy.
“This is the responsibility of these officials to conduct random checks on their levels. Who’s appointed the DGHS? Who’s appointed the health secretary? We have not appointed them. The officials chosen by them are engaging in malpractices and they are recommending the CBI investigation. They are launching a probe against their chosen ones, not against us,”