HC asks DDA to name official who signed hospital lease deed

New Delhi, Feb 22 (UNI) The Delhi High Court today asked the Delhi Development Authority(DDA) to submit the name of the official who omitted the clause for free treatment to poor patients in one of the documents relating to the lease deed while allotting the land for the establishment of Dharamshila Cancer Hospital in East Delhi in 1995.

A division bench of Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice H R Malhotra directed the DDA counsel to file the report by tomorrow, so that the court could take up the matter.

''Find out what action was taken against him for dereliction of duty,'' said the bench while hearing a public interest petition on providing free treatment to the poor in 26 private hospitals, which were allotted land at a concessional rate.

The Court today scrutinised the documents pertaining to lease deeds of Dharamshila Cancer Hospital and Escorts Hospital, which claimed that the lease deeds did not contain the clause of free treatment to 25 per cent of patients.

The DDA, the land owning agency, submitted that the lease agreements of both the hospitals, at the time of allotment of land for the first time, contained the clause but the documents during the subsequent allotments did not contain such clauses.

The subsequent allottment of land to both the hospitals were meant for green areas and other buildings such as kitchen, store and research centres, said the Counsel.

Senior Counsel Sidharth Mridul, a member of the court-appointed committee, said if the free treatment clause was implemented, the private hospitals would have at least 1000 beds meant for poor patients.

The Court asked the Delhi Principal Health Secretary, Director General Health Services and other top officials to chalk out a modality to form two committees--Supervising and Monitoring-- to implement the directions of the court.

The Committee would decide the modalities to admit the patients according to their income.

The bench suggested that the government would be asked to direct some of the patients to these private hospitals, if there were no facilities in the public hospitals.

The Delhi Development Authority and the Land and Development Office (L and DO) of the Delhi government had allotted 70 plots to various trusts and societies to establish hospitals out of which only 26 are currently operational. While DDA had allotted 24 of these 26 plots, L and DO had leased out two on an agreement that free treatment be provided to 25 and 70 percent of the patients respectively.

UNI