Strongly suspect under-reporting in COVID deaths, NHRC must seek details: Chidambaram

After a Gujarati newspaper alleged that there was underreporting in the number of COVID-related deaths in Gujarat, former Union Minister P Chidambaram has urged the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to ask all the state governments to submit a report on the total number of death certificates issued in 2020 and 2021.

New Delhi:As allegations of serious underreporting of COVID-19 deaths are raised, Senior Congress leader and former Union Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday urged the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to ask all the state governments to submit a report on the total number of death certificates issued in 2020 and 2021.

This comes after a Gujarati newspaper published a report on Friday alleging that the Gujarat government had issued 1.23 lakh death certificates between March 1 and May 10, compared to 58,000 certificates issued in the same period last year.

Chidambaram said, "The increase was an alarming number of about 65,000 death certificates. This increase cannot be explained as a natural annual increase in the number of deaths. It can only be attributed to a pandemic or any other natural disaster."

"I'm willing to concede that the number of death certificates may increase by 5-7%, but certainly cannot be increased by over 100%. It can only be attributed to a pandemic. Someone needs to ask why these people die," he said.

Chidambaram said that the Congress party had independently verified the two numbers (given by the Gujarat government and the newspaper) referred to above for the period of 71 days. "We have collected the numbers from 33 districts, including the cities of Gujarat. The sum of the number of the death certificates nearly tallies with the numbers published (by the newspaper): 1,23,873 in 2021 vs 58,068 in 2020."

As per the official data of the Gujarat government, only 4,218 COVID-related deaths have been reported from March 1 - May 10 this year.

The Congress leader also claimed that these suspicions are "confirmed" by the fact that hundreds of unidentified bodies have been found floating in River Ganga and nearly 2,000 unidentified bodies have been found buried on the sands along the River Ganga.

"We have a strong suspicion that the Government of India, in conjunction with some state governments, is suppressing the true numbers of new infections and COVID-related deaths. If our suspicions are true, this is a grave misdeed apart from being a national shame and a national tragedy," Chidambaram said.

In addition to this, he suggested that the Pradesh Congress committees immediately write to their chief ministers and the ministries concerned to submit a concrete number of deaths that occurred in their respective states.

"This statement will be sent to lawyers who are appearing in Supreme Court and I am hopeful that one of them would file it in SC and the apex court will be persuaded to issue a notice to all the state governments to file an affidavit disclosing the number of death certificates issued last year and this year," he said.