HC asks Maha govt if it plans to requisition pvt ambulances

The Bombay High Court on Thursday sought to know if the Maharashtra government is planning to requisition private ambulances amid the coronavirus outbreak. A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Amjad Sayed was hearing a petition filed by former BJP MP Kirit Somaiya, raising concern over shortage of ambulances in Mumbai.

The city had 3,000 ambulances, including private ones, as of March 20 but the number of available ambulances fell drastically to about 100 after the coronavirus outbreak, the petition claimed. While the number of COVID-19 cases in the city is steadily increasing and movement of other public and private vehicles is restricted due to lockdown, there is a shortage of ambulances for needy patients, it said.

The high court asked the government to inform on Friday (June 5) if it could requisition private ambulances across the state. The government-run 108' ambulance service has 93 ambulances at its disposal in Mumbai while private operators run around 3,000 ambulances, said the petition.

"It is shocking to note that there has been a significant decrease in the number of private ambulances rendering their services during the pandemic," it added. The Maharashtra government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation were ignoring this situation and not making any efforts to increase the number of ambulances, Somaiya alleged.

The petition said that the state government, through public-private arrangement, has at its disposal nearly 1,000 ambulances across the state, including 93 in Mumbai. Sixty of these ambulances are reserved for COVID-19 patients and 23 for other services in Mumbai. The BMC hotline number for these ambulances is `108', it informed.