It seems the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHF) maintains two different records – one for responding to Right To Information (RTI) questions and another for press releases.
Otherwise, in the matter of 13,000 unused ventilators in the height of the COVID crisis, how does one explain two different sets of data in MoHF’s RTI reply and and their subsequent press release, both on the same subject?
The Quint on 21 July published an article titled “Centre Kept 13,000 Unused Ventilators During COVID Second Wave Crisis”. The article was based on the RTI responses received by Nilesh G Prabhu, a businessman, from the MoHF clearly stating that the ministry had procured 59,873 ventilators by June 2020. And till 1 June 2021, 46,900 ventilators were supplied by the Centre, 42,856 ventilators to 36 States/UTs and 4044 ventilators to “Central Institutions”. Which means that 13,000 ventilators were lying unused with the Central government.
Before publishing the article on 21 July, The…