The Delhi High Court yesterday severely criticised ministry of health and family welfare and directorate general of health services (DGHS) for lack of coordination in the Rs 5,000 crore medical equipment import scam and directed them to bring all the relevant records to the court on May one.
A division bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice D K Jain, while perusing the interim reports of the two committees probing into various aspects of the scam, said none of the officials against whom opinion of chief vigilance commissioner (CVC) was sought for their alleged involvement in the scam would be considered for promotion.
The health ministry counsel, Keshav Dayal, told the bench that of the 19 officers indicted by the report of K Chandramouli, who examnined 23 cases involving grant of customs duty exemption on import of costly medical equipments, 10 had been asked to show cause why they would not be prosecuted.
Of these five have given reply and the CVC has recommended major penalties against two officers and two other cases have been referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation for criminal misconduct.
The petitioner, Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, had alleged that taking advantage of the Centres notification allowing charitable hospitals to import duty free costly medical equipments, commercial hospitals in connivance with officials in the DGHS and health ministry obtained customs duty exemption certificates for import of these equipments causing a loss of Rs 5,000 crore to the govenrment exchequer.
The lack of knowledge on the part of both the ministry and the DGHS regarding the 112 cases where a decision on the grant of CDEC has been pending, made the court to criticise them and at one point of time it even thought of calling senior officials from both sides to be present at the next date of hearing.
However, both the health minisry counsel and counsel for DGHS, Rakesh Tiku, undertook to get back to the court on May one with all the relevant files and details thereof.
The DGHS, however, informed the court that it has decided to reject the application for grant of customs duty exemption to one Serelex Diagnostic Centre.
The court exrpessed its dissatisfaction over the fact that though both ministry of health and DGHS were on one floor of the Nirman Bhavan, the transfer of files from one to another took over four months.
Meanwhile, the bench also asked S D Mohiley to continue as the member of the committee for recovery of the customs duty from defaulting hospitals despite his promotion as the chairman of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).
The committee headed by former director general (security) in Jammu and Kashmir, Padam A Rosha, for finding out how many hospitals violated the CDEC norm, also submitted an interim report.
Rosha told the court that they would be able to complete the task in eight months and the court gave them time till February 1998.
The bench asked counsel for the department of revenue, Madan Lokur, and counsel for ministry of law, Meera Bhatia, to tell the court on the next date of hearing the status of the transfer petition pending in the Supreme Court and as to why was it not listed for hearing till date despite being filed on April nine.
The petition before the Supreme Court seeks transfer of all cases related to the medical scam pending before other high courts to the Delhi High Court, which is monitoring the overall probe.
