Calcutta HC Clears Bengal's ₹112 Per Patient Food Allocation For Govt Hospitals

Kolkata, Aug 4: 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 patients in government hospitals in the state.

To recall, the state government in West Bengal increased the allocation for per-patient food from the earlier allocation of Rs 57 to the revised allocation of Rs 112.

A notification on this count was also issued by the state government on July 23 this year. 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 the fixing of allocation for patients’ food was already pending before 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 notification for the time being. Thereafter, the state government approached the Calcutta High Court’s Division Bench of Justice Shampa Sarkar and Justice Ajay Gupta, challenging the decision of the single judge.

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The hearing in the matter was conducted before the Division Bench on Tuesday afternoon, following which the Bench set aside the interim stay on the state government notification imposed by the single-judge Bench.

While setting aside the interim stay, the Division Bench observed that it was not desirable that, just because of legal complications, the state government would not be able to take positive welfare steps.

Following the Division Bench order, there will no longer be any legal obstacle to the state providing food at the increased cost. In the past, there had been several complaints about the quality of food served to 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.

That is why the 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.

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