New Delhi: After the Central government, in an affidavit, to the Supreme Court claimed that the Delhi government had failed to contain the surge of COVID-19 cases that came with the third wave, a bitter war of words ensued between the AAP-led government and the BJP-led government.
While the Centre insisted that the Delhi government had anticipated the surge but failed to contain it, a statement from the city government called it "unfortunate" that the Centre was choosing to play politics over this issue.
The Centre filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on Friday in which it blamed the Delhi government for failing to contain the surge of COVID-19 cases in the city.
The affidavit said that despite anticipating a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi due to the approaching winter and festive season, the Kejriwal government was lax in its response to the pandemic, and failed to enforce precautionary measures.
The Centre also assigned blame to the Delhi government for failing to increase COVID-19 testing capacity in the city and for their lack of timely measures to increase ICU beds.
However, responding to the Centre's comments, the Delhi government, calling the remarks 'unfortunate', said the affidavit is "factually incorrect" and "seems to have been drafted by a BJP Spokesperson, rather than by the Union government which is meant to work in collaboration with the states at the time of a pandemic."
"Amit Shah promised to provide 750 ICU beds within 72 hours in the meeting held on November 15. However, to date, only 200 beds have been provided. We hope the Centre will provide the rest of the beds soon. The Central government has also deprived Delhi of all funds provided to other state governments during this epidemic on the flimsy premise that Delhi is a Union Territory. We hope they do something concrete, rather than playing blame-games," the Delhi government said in its response.
Adding that the Central government's decision to "indulge in dirty politics at this critical hour is unfortunate", a spokesperson for the Delhi government said that it is "worried about the well being of its people and will continue to work together with all governments and all agencies as it has been doing so far."