Kolkata, Aug 4 (IANS) A Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday set aside a stay put earlier by a single-judge Bench of the same court on the West Bengal government’s decision for higher allocation for food served to the patients in government hospitals in the state.
To recall, the new state government in West Bengal increased the allocation for per-patient food from earlier allocation of Rs 57 to the revised allocation of Rs 112.
A notification on this count was issued by the state government on July 23 this year also. However, an organisation approached the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge Bench of Justice Krishna Rao challenging the state government notification.
The contention of the petitioner was that since another case regarding fixing of allocation for patients’ food was already pending at the court, how could the state government fix the revised rate-chart on its own.
Thereafter the single-judge Bench of Justice Rao stayed the implementation of the state government for the time being. Thereafter, the state government approached Calcutta High Court’s Division Bench of Justice Shampa Sarkar and Justice Ajay Gupta challenging the decision of the single-judge.
The hearing in the matter was conducted at a Division Bench on Tuesday afternoon, following which the said Division Bench had set aside the interim stay on the state government notification put by the single-judge Bench.
While setting aside the interim stay, the Division Bench observed that it was not desirable that just because of the legal complications the state government would to be able to take positive welfare steps.
Following the Division Bench order, there will be no longer any legal obstacle for the state providing food at increased cost. In the past there had been several complaints about the quality of food served to the patients in state-run hospitals.
The government’s contention has always been that following the paltry allocation under this head it was virtually impossible to serve better quality food.
Thats is why the new state government decided to hike the allocation on this count, which received a temporary hurdle following the earlier order by the single-judge Bench of the Calcutta High Court. But that hurdle was removed following Tuesday’s order of the Division Bench.
–IANS
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