What did Centre do in last 14 months: Madras HC

What was the Centre doing in the last 14 months to control the pandemic, the Madras high court asked on Thursday. Responding to the additional solicitor general’s submission that the Covid-19 surge was ‘unexpected’, Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee said the Centre should have acted in a planned and informed manner with expert advice rather than scrambling now when the second wave was at its peak.

He also asked him about the vaccine pricing and crash of the CoWin app that took place on Wednesday shortly after it was launched. The ASG said he would address this on Friday. The division bench comprising the CJ and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy wondered who the experts were that the Centre had been consulting. The bench observed that it was crucial to act on expert advice and not adhocism at this point. Tamil Nadu is among four states that went to polls in April and has seen a massive surge lately.