High Courts free to deal with Covid-19 petitions, says Supreme Court

High courts were free to deal with Covid-19 cases and the Supreme Court has not restrained them from giving relief to people in any way, the Supreme Court has said. The clarification came during Friday’s hearing on the SC’s suo motu case on Covid-19 and Centre’s subsequent submission for clubbing and transferring cases in different high courts on urgent pleas on a variety of issues.

“We never said a word and did not stop high courts. We asked the Centre to go to high courts and report to them. What kind of perception are you talking about? Talk about these proceedings,” the bench told senior advocate Dushyant Dave, at the outset of the video proceedings.

The court fixed further hearing for Tuesday after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta sought time for filing the Centre's response to the notice issued on Thursday. CJI-designate NV Ramana would replace SA Bobde by then as Friday was Bobde’s last day as CJI.


The SC dubbed the rising deaths due to lack of oxygen in hospitals as a “national emergency” and sought to have all bottlenecks removed in its movement nationally. “People are dying due to lack of oxygen. Please say something concrete. We don’t want any confrontation,” a three-judge bench of CJI Bobde Justices L Nageswara Rao and Ravinder Bhatt said.

The bench reminded all of the Directive Principle of State Policy in the Constitution which mandates the government to ensure equitable distribution of all resources throughout the country. It also demanded to know why oxygen surplus states such as Tamil Nadu could not produce more oxygen by taking over plants such as Vedanta’s Tuticorin copper plant. The Tuticorin plant has been shut since 2018 over environmental violations and police firing on protesters. The state government for this reason opposed Vedanta’s offer to open the plant, repair it and manufacture 1000 metric tonnes of oxygen for free at the site.

A bench asked Tamil Nadu why it refused the offer. “We have never heard anything like this. We don’t like Vedanta so we won’t make oxygen, let people die. The whole point of this exercise is to ensure oxygen to the people. The people of this country need it. Let the state run it.”

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said “the country is in bad need of oxygen. Every state cannot say that they will use their own oxygen. The central government is not concerned if the state or Vedanta run the plant,” he said. The court asked Tamil Nadu to get back with its response on this soon. The court also gave more time to the Centre a national oxygen plan that would ensure its equitable distribution throughout the country.