Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar has demanded Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to immediately sack Health Minister T. Harish Rao holding him responsible for the death of four poor women due to botched family planning operations.
Talking to the media after visiting the women undergoing treatment at Apollo Hospitals after severe infection following sterilisation surgeries at the Community Health Centre in Ibrahimpatnam on August 25, he charged the State government with trying to wash off its hands by paying an ex gratia of mere ₹5 lakh to each of the victims’ families and demanded an ex gratia of ₹1 crore each to the families, besides granting them houses and giving free education to their children.
Similarly, those undergoing treatment after facing health complications due to botched surgeries should be paid ₹10 lakh each, he said.
Condemning the ‘over-enthusiasm’ of doctors in conducting 34 double puncture laparoscopic surgeries in a span of one hour only for the sake of creating a record, the BJP president wondered why KCR had not bothered about calling on the victim’s families.
“Instead, the Chief Minister chose to fly down to Bihar to distribute cheques to the families of Bhoiguda fire accident victims. For him, gaining publicity with such tricks is more important than poor women’s lives,” he said and reminded that this was not the first time that KCR had not called on accident victims in Telangana in the last eight years.
The government is trying to escape from its basic responsibility by constituting a committee to inquire into the incident without taking any action against the officials responsible for the tragedy, he added.
