'The Narendra Modi government is procuring 5,000 ventilators from a Rajkot-based firm which has already been accused of supplying breathing machines to Ahmedabad’s largest COVID-19 hospital that doctors there say are not up to the mark. The firm’s current and former promoters have had close associations with top BJP leaders – with at least one business family, The Wire has established, linked to the controversial gift of an expensive suit to Prime Minister Modi. This procurement is being done through state-run HLL Lifecare, according to Gujarat’s principal health secretary Jayanti Ravi.
'Testing of migrant workers returning to Bihar is underlining the twin challenge that public health experts have warned about — the virus is being carried in and many of the carriers are asymptomatic. Until May 18, Bihar tested a total of 8,337 samples of migrant workers and about 8% were found to be Covid-positive — double the national average positivity rate which is about 4%. Of the 835 samples taken from migrant workers who returned from Delhi, as many as 218 were Covid positive. This works out to a positivity rate of over 26%, while the rate in the national capital is about 7%...'
'More than 20 migrant labourers were killed and dozens were injured after the truck they were travelling in collided with another vehicle in Auraiya district of Uttar Pradesh early on Saturday, reports said. The trailer truck, carrying around 50 migrant labourers, was coming from Rajasthan when it collided with a van coming from Delhi in Auraiya district’s Mihauli area, reports said...'
'A five-year-old Dalit child allegedly died of hunger in Jharkhand’s Latehar district on May 16. Her father, a brick-kiln worker, said he had not been earned any wages during the lockdown. Video testimonies released by activists who visited the child’s home in Hesatu village, show family members, neighbours and community health workers attributing Nimani’s death to hunger. “She died of hunger,” the child’s mother, Kamlawati, can be heard saying in one of the videos. “She had not eaten for four-five days. What can we eat when there is nothing to eat?”...'
'While the whole world has been fighting the novel coronavirus, Telinipara, a locality in the suburban West Bengal town of Bhadreswar, 40 km north of state capital Kolkata, has been fighting communal tension since May 12. Telinipara, once famous for its jute industry, is located on the eastern edge of Hooghly district, beside the eponymous river, and is part of Hooghly parliamentary constituency. On the evening of Sunday, May 10, a small inter-community squabble broke out here, which was resolved by police intervention. Monday, May 11 passed without incident.
'The number of Covid-19 deaths in Delhi has been under the scanner for discrepancies between the government figures and those the hospitals have reported, leading to an upwards revision to 115 until Thursday, 14 May. But now, data accessed by ThePrint raises new questions about even this revised number of deaths in the city. The consolidated figures for Covid-related deaths provided by the designated cremation and burial grounds in the national capital is 443, which includes confirmed as well as suspected cases...'
'“Hum paison ka chakkar mein nahin hai. Ghar jane ka chakkar mein hai,” said Mangal Yadav from Bihar. (We are not after money. We want to go back home). The sentiment was echoed by the hundreds of other labourers gathered under the pandal inside the IIT Hyderabad labour camp in Kandi village in Telangana’s Sangareddy district, when TNM met them in early May. Work was resumed by L&T management at phase 2 of the IIT Hyderabad campus from May 4, yet from about 600 labourers left in the camp, only a handful re-joined. The rest, like Mangal, had defied.
'Gujarat governor Acharya Devvrat has approved an Ordinance exempting new businesses being set up in the state from almost all the labour laws for a period of over three years. A top state government official said that the Governor’s nod to the draft Ordinance came earlier this week and it has now been sent for President Ram Nath Kovind’s assent on Wednesday...'
'Six migrant workers were killed and 95 others injured in separate road accidents in Uttar Pradesh when they were returning home during the ongoing lockdown to combat the coronavirus outbreak, police said on Friday...'
'Amidst the dark shadow of India’s lockdown, the Delhi police – controlled by the Central government – has been busy with tasks entirely unrelated to controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. Its schedule is packed with searching homes and offices; confiscating phones and documents; and questioning, detaining, and arresting large numbers of persons. It is instructive that these arrests are being made when the Supreme Court has directed governments to decongest jails to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
