PATNA: Following Bihar's revised it's Covid-19 toll on Wednesday after the state added 3,951 deaths to 5,500 deaths taking the total death toll to 9,429, leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav attacked the Nitish Kumar government for mishandling the pandemic and under reporting the COVID-19 statistics. He criticized Chief Minister Nitish Kumar saying, "When the Nitish Kumar government is fake, how can the stats not be fake"
"Nitish ji, don't lie and do not make others lie. Now that you've been trapped, the death count suddenly increased by 4000 in a day", he tweeted. "There have been 20 times more deaths than the figure that Nitish Kumar government is reporting", he added.
The COVID-19 death toll in India saw a massive jump on Thursday after the Bihar health department revised the toll in the state to more than 9,000. According to the Union health ministry data released on Thursday morning, India saw 6,148 fatalities, the highest single-day toll so far, which took the overall tally to 3,59,676.
Bihar health minister, Mangal Pandey, on Thursday said the government has been working on revising the Covid-19 death toll for the past few weeks after it came to know from various sources that the death toll due to Covid-19 could be more in number. "After consultation with stakeholders, the state government instructed the district administration to identify institutional deaths due to Covid-19", he said.
The Patna high court has recently flagged incinsistenct in the death figures reported in Buxar. The figure of the state's chief secretary and Patna divisional commissioner did not match following which the judges asked the government to verify facts from all sources.
In the the three crematoriums in Patna-Bans Ghat, Gulbi Ghat and Khajekalan on the banks of Ganga, Patna Municipal Corporation staff had allowed cremation with COVID-19 protocols for 1548 bodies ,but district administration had reported only 446 deaths last month. While, Divisional Commissioner in his affidavit, had submitted 790 people were cremated in one week at Charitravan Ghat in Buxar, Chief secretary in his affidavit claimed 70 people were cremated between May 5 and May 14.
