Nagpur: Deaths of three newborns in a fire at the Amravati district women’s hospital on Monday triggered a political backlash, with opposition leaders accusing the BJP-led Mahayuti govt of failing to ensure basic safety standards and demanding criminal action against those responsible.Congress Legislature Party leader Vijay Wadettiwar said the hospital had not undergone the required safety audit and questioned state of public healthcare in Maharashtra. “Similar child deaths took place in Bhandara, a couple of years ago,” he said, alleging shortages of doctors and medicines.“If a school management is booked after a snakebite incident, then in the Amravati case, register an offence of culpable homicide against the health minister and senior officials of the department,” he said.Calling the incident a question of whether newborns had become ‘victims of the system’, Wadettiwar said the preliminary information pointed to a suspected ventilator explosion triggering the fire. He demanded a comprehensive investigation into the ventilator, electrical and oxygen systems and the hospital’s fire-safety arrangements. “Bogus ventilators are used, which are purchased from the PM Cares Fund,” he said.Former Congress minister Yashomati Thakur accused govt of negligence and called it a ‘56 % commission government’. She demanded an investigation into whether the ventilator was defective, whether an electrical fault was involved and who supplied the equipment. She also criticised shortages of doctors and basic facilities in govt hospitals and questioned broader state of healthcare infrastructure.Former MP Navneet Rana, who visited the hospital, also demanded criminal action against those responsible. “It is an act of playing with the poor,” she said, describing the deaths as deeply painful. “Only a mother who nurtures a child in her womb for nine months knows the pain of losing her baby,” Rana said. She called for the hospital’s fire audit to be examined and sought a thorough probe into the incident.Amravati Congress MP Balwant Wankhade held the govt responsible and demanded action against the company, the ventilator supplier. “This company is BJP’s favourite,” he alleged, demanding registration of an offence of culpable homicide against those found responsible.Amravati mayor Shrichand Tejwani demanded that the company whichprovided the ventilator be blacklisted, alleging equipment supplied by them had failed for the second time after an earlier incident in 2022. Former mayor Chetan Gawande demanded that the Sick Newborn Care Unit (SNCU) be shifted to the ground floor.
