Delhi government's new healthcare move an admission of failure: BJP

The BJP on Saturday dismissed the Delhi government's newspaper advertisements on providing alternative health services as an attempt to divert people's attention from the cases of corruption against it.

"The alternative health services announced through big advertisements in various newspapers today (Saturday) by the Arvind Kejriwal government is only an attempt to divert the attention of the people from the cases of corruption against it," Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Manoj Tiwari said at a press conference here.

Tiwari's remarks came after the Delhi government placed ads in newspapers promising free surgeries in National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH) private hospitals to residents of Delhi if the waiting list for surgery was more than 30 days in city government hospitals.

Tiwari said that in the last three budgets the Kejriwal government had claimed to increase 50 per cent in the budget allocation for health services and also for providing all medicines free of cost besides making all its hospitals, super specialty hospitals, like AIIMS.

"Now the Kejriwal government has completed about half of its term and now this deception of providing health services through private hospitals is a complete admission of its failure to provide health services to the people," the BJP leader alleged.

Lashing out at the Delhi government, Tiwari said, "Just like the fraud and hawala operations by the Health Minister Satyendar Jain, it seems that this scheme to provide health services through private hospitals will be a new opportunity for corruption."

Tiwari, who also represents the northeast constituency of Delhi in Lok Sabha, said this new scheme was announced in haste and without making proper preparations.

"The way in which the government had to issue warning to private hospitals and diagnostic centers to attend the seminar shows that this scheme of the government has been announced in haste and without making proper preparations," Tiwari added.

--IANS

aks/rn