‘Conspiracy’ of Centre, some states to suppress Covid fatalities: Cong

Saying that it strongly suspects that the Central government and some state governments are suppressing the true numbers of new infections and Covid-related deaths, the Congress Friday asked the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to ask all states to submit death certificates issued by them last year and this year.

Addressing a press conference, former Union minister P Chidambaram and senior Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil referred to a report in Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar which said that between March 1 and May 10 this year, the state has issued about 1.23 lakh death certificates as against about 58,000 issued during the same period last year. The government of Gujarat has officially admitted to 4,218 Covid-related deaths during the period.

“The increase was an alarming number of about 65,000 death certificates. This increase cannot be explained as a natural annual increase in the number of deaths. It can only be attributed to a pandemic or any other natural disaster,” Chidambaram said. He said the Congress has independently verified the numbers.

“We have a strong suspicion that the bulk of the increased number of deaths is due to Covid and the state government is suppressing the true number of Covid-related deaths… ,” he said.

The NHRC, he said, “must ask every state to submit figures of death certificates issued last year… and then the death certificates issued this year. I am willing to concede… that the number of death certificates may increase by 5-7 per cent or so but it certainly cannot increase by over a hundred per cent…”

“There is a conspiracy of silence and conspiracy of lies to suppress the number of deaths due to Covid,” he added.

Chidambaram said his statement will be “sent to the lawyers who are appearing in the Supreme Court” and hoped “one of them will file it in the Supreme Court”.

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