 Welcome to NewsClick, I'm Paranjoy Gohar Thakurtha and today we're going to discuss how people's money is being spent to purchase ventilators in a completely non-transparent matter. And we're going to really examine whether some people are profiteering from the pandemic and in the process endangering the lives of COVID-19 patients. I'm happy to welcome here with me is Venkatesh Nayak, he's an activist who has been using the Right to Information Act for a long time. He heads the Access to Information Program of the International Non-Government Organization called the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and he's also a co-convener of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information. Thank you so much Venkatesh for giving us your time and giving the viewers of your time. Thank you very much for inviting me Paranjoy. I just read the article that has been published by Huffington Post India on the 24th of 2020 written by Samarth Bansal and Aman Sethi which goes into great detail to explain how ventilators are being purchased using money from the PM Cares Fund that's the Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations funds that at the end of the day is really money that has been picked up from large numbers of people including public money and how these ventilators are being purchased in a completely non-transparent manner and some could argue even in an illegal manner. So let's go step by step since you and the information that you've gathered you've contributed a lot to the Huffington Post article. Let me start by looking at the big picture. Now there is this public sector company called HLL Life Care HLL earlier used to be Hindustan Latex Limited. It's a public sector organization and it has been tasked with procuring ventilators different categories of ventilators including you know very basic ventilators and advanced ventilators and eight different procurement orders were issued by HLL Life Care between the 27th of March that means just after the lockdown and the 17th of the following month that's the 17th of April for a total of 28,963 ventilators. Now kindly explain why this was done in a completely apparently irregular and a non-transparent manner because by the 7th of September only 18% of the 28,963 ventilators had actually been delivered which was very very different from the other public sector undertaking which is Bharat Electronics Limited which comes under the Ministry of Defence. They delivered 80% of the 30,000 ventilators that they were supposed to deliver. So kindly explain what went wrong. Well you see it's so interesting to note that the process of procuring ventilators along with other essential medical supplies like personal protection kits you know the first tender as far as my knowledge goes that call for proposals call for bids actually is advertised on the 5th of March more than three weeks before the national nationwide lockdown was imposed. So the process has been going on since the beginning of March itself. But what alerted me to this whole process of procurement of ventilators were two or three elements to it. Number one I had read the stories of how ventilators supplied by certain private manufacturers particularly in Gujarat and some in Mumbai I don't know if the companies were the same but then the doctors were complaining about the poor quality of the ventilators that had been procured. This was some time I think I remember reading these stories some time in May and June and then the other part of the problem also was again HuffPost itself which had published an article highlighting one issue where they had said that the specifications for these ventilators that were to be procured by Hindustan Late Exhibitor or HLL Life Care as they are called now they kept changing for example now that the right to information intervention story that the Huffington Post has published is based only on a partial reply to one of my RTI applications I have filed two other for example a fresh procurement process for ventilators was initiated in June and I had asked information about that as well nothing has come through and I had asked specific information from HLL about reasons for changing these specifications sometimes at the gap of you know a week there were at least three times the specifications were changed none of those RTIs have been replied it's only one RTI relating to procurement process that began in March and for which purchase orders were issued which they have replied so what appears to be happening here is from the from a look at the you know replies that committee was set up for evaluating the proposals that had come through and this is something which has not really come been highlighted much in the story which Huffington Post has published you know it's a technical committee that comes under the empowered group number three which has been set up under the Ministry of Home Affairs you know nine groups were set up and this is part of group three the technical committee comes under them and its name is very interesting you know it is called the DGHS DRDO committee in other words the Director General of Health Services and the Department of Research Development Organization committee. Defense research and development organization. Exactly now why is this important now an RTI activist and those who've been following RTI the unraveling of RTI movement and the use of RTI in India you would remember I know they will recall DRDO is one of the 27 exempt organizations under the RTI you cannot get information from DRDO on matters other than allegations of human rights violations or allegations of corruption so it is not a standard public authority which is involved in this process it is an organization that has been given special cover in terms of secrecy as far as transparency to the general public is concerned which is involved so it is this technical committee which actually sat and evaluated the beds that came from a variety of companies we don't know how many because that response has not been provided to me and eventually the committee decided to award the procurement orders to six companies BEL, Agwa, Hel-Aid, Medicines Limited, BPL, WICPRO and interestingly the sixth company was China Sinopharm and I've been given a reply saying that this China Sinopharm company has actually supplied 1020 liters we don't know what cost because the list of purchase order numbers quantities and actual amount of payment that was approved for procurement that does not include this company's name I was cross-checking it again so that information is not available there so what is surprising in this whole exercise? Even as there is a huge amount of China bashing happening in the public domain we are seeing Jinguism on the rise and we have enough statements coming from important personalities in the government saying don't do business with China we are not actually I mean this is all what should I say pulling the wool over people's eyes I mean it's just a what should I say Jumla hoax? Absolutely I mean that's quite surprising how is it that this company qualifies in the procurement process when the government of India has very clearly said that we're not going to do any truck or trade with anything to do with you know Chinese manufacturers or suppliers in India so that's one part of the supplies and the other part of the surprising in a bit is the categories of information that have actually not even been responded to now if I were to take you through the original RTI application that I had filed which I have with me here and I'm happy to share this later on with you if you want to push a screen shots you see I had specifically asked for the name designation and complete contact details of all members of the technical committee which evaluated these product specifications submitted by various manufacturers and suppliers names nothing has been provided no designation we just know they belong to DGHS and they belong to DRDO and I had also asked for copies of the minutes of their meetings these also have been refused saying that these are not available with the HLL company they are they don't even they're just saying it's available with the joint technical committee nothing's available so to sort of simplify the story you are saying we don't know any details of this technical committee which was supposed to evaluate this entire process of procuring ventilators I mean we know that the Prime Minister had said and the Prime Minister had said that ventilators would be procured and kept aside 2000 crore rupees from the PM cares fund and was supposed to procure 58,850 ventilators that's never come back to this we're going to talk about the opaqueness the arbitrariness but before that let's look at a few case studies let's look at trivitron health care it's a 23 year old company based in Chennai it got a government order to supply 10,000 ventilators 7000 quote-unquote basic each price that about 1.66 lakhs and 3000 quote-unquote advanced priced at 8.57 lakhs this is inclusive of GST but interestingly the document which the tender document does not talk about two types of ventilators two technical specifications and what is even more amazing is that this trivitron order comes from Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone which is a different public sector undertaking under the state government of Andhra Pradesh so HLL life care which is a central government public sector undertaking it asked the Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone to supply 13,500 ventilators of which 10,000 goes to trivitron now why do we have this kind of two-step contracting process this is really amazing because trivitron says I've invested huge amounts of money they see the co-CEO of the company has been quoted in half post but you're saying we are waiting for the dispatch order the purchase order from the Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone the state government public sector undertaking was endorsed by HLL life care I mean the whole thing is really amazing that here you have a company which is supposed to be one of India's largest medical equipment companies I mean it was making devices now it want to make ventilators and most interestingly Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inaugurated a factory of that company in 2016 yeah what's going on Venkatesh in fact this is this was news to me as well now you've looked at the RTI reply documents that I have received nowhere in the reply provided by HLL life care does it mention that trivitron was the company which was actually responsible for supplying such a huge quantity of ventilators all that the reply document mentions is the Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone which received the work order now I am not an expert on procurement I'm just a transparency activist however my line of work requires me not only to read the right to information act but also have a nodding familiarity of the procurement procedures adopted by the public sector agencies and today the most basic document that explains the public procurement procedures is a general financial rules of 2015 and what is surprising when I looked at the general financial rules is that there is no mention of subcontracting the understanding if it's somebody bids for you know in a certain procurement process then it is understood that that bidder would actually be the supplier or the producer nothing in the RTI documents provided to me or the information actually provided documents have not been provided this information nothing indicates as to how the technical committee constituted with the partner you know collaboration of DGHS and DRDO whether they even knew that AMTZ was not even the primary manufacturer of a large proportion of the ventilator orders which was eventually issued but it was some other company so how was the evaluation done what for example now one of the replies to do one of the queries that I received it actually says and I'm going to read it out for you it says that as per directions of the empowerment and power group number three which is set up under the Minister of Home Affairs to deal with medical supplies and in Covid times it says the DGHS committee with two invitees from DRDO they are called the joint technical committee they evaluated the demonstrations Messers Bharat Electronics Limited Messers Agua Healthcare Messers AMTZ and Messers Allied were asked to demonstrate their models the demo was carried out by the manufacturers mentioned about evaluation reports prepared by the joint technical committee H&L is therefore unable to supply detailed information about this so the question is when did tribitrons models actually get demonstrated was it AMTZ like for example I mean you are pointing out that a large part of the ventilators came from tribitron but probably a smaller proportion of that came from AMTZ so which model was actually demonstrated before the joint technical committee which one received approval now no so these are all shrouded in secrecy you know this is the main point we don't know whereas you know government body a central public sector undertaking as has been pointed out in the HuffPost report by Dr. EAS Sarma who's a former secretary in the Ministry of Finance unique transparency unique to ensure this competition and the competition is fair now these eight different procurement orders issued by H&L in late March and April now they are all a range of models from a basic model which is 1.67 lakhs which is Agfa and also tribitron you go all the way up to 15.34 lakhs which is the BPL Eliza 600 advanced model alright now the amazing part of this whole story that I as appeared in Huffington post and which is that when tribitron got the order it was yet to develop those models yes and after it invest money and develops those models yes it is yet to get a dispatch order from H&L so it can deliver the machines the whole thing sounds so I mean it's like so bizarre that one could even laugh at it some sort of black comedy except that you wonder these are machines that are meant to save the lives of COVID-19 patients it's a matter of endangering the lives of patients absolutely this is very worrisome because you know continuing from where I left in response to previous question the biggest question that needs to be asked is if this one company tribitron was actually a manufacturer does not matter if it's a late intro you know entry or it's a late you know player in the game or whatever why did they not directly participate in the procurement process why did it have to be done through a MTZ so that's one question that remains unanswered then the other question is that look if today if I were to compare that with the vaccine trials that are going on which go through several stages to ensure the efficacy and the you know the human response is assessed through various stages after the animal testing is done and only when there are certain standards are met with is the vaccine released for you know use in the larger population a machine that is actually intended to save a person who is almost a debt store because ventilator is in some way to the best of my understanding from a person because off late when I started watching these you know TV news reports and also reading up in the media you know quite intently that these are ventilators is not the first in a line of healthcare it's only when the person's condition worsens the person is not able to take in that oxygen supply that ventilator it's an it's a forced invasive procedure so a machine that is actually used essentially in a life-saving situation it's not even been manufactured it gets manufactured after the procurement order is issued now there is something usually fishy as to what the whole selection process involved and this was a public decision-making process and that is what is extremely worrisome because in response to my RTI application the HLL you know company has actually said that there are medical professionals who are inducted from DGHs from various reputed hospitals and medical colleges as members of the technical committee names are not mentioned designations are not mentioned so what actually did they look at whose demonstration did they actually examine against the specifications that were meant that were given finally you know sometime towards the I think it was the end of April or so when the third batch the third round of specifications were finalizing response to which these supplies you know were made so this is this is a huge question mark Venkatesh I've suffered a personal improvement my own brother-in-law my sister's husband died of COVID on the 10th of May he was put on a ventilator in a hospital in Calcutta I'm so I'm just trying to tell you I am truly amazed at what is going on I mean to me it seems how can this happen I keep asking myself I mean let's look at some of the facts as we've already discussed the public sector undertaking the central public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Defense Bharat electronics limited delivers 80% of the ventilators it is supposed to deliver it has got 30,000 an order for 30,000 it delivers 24,332 it has a tie up with a Mysore based company called scan ray interestingly HLL the other central public sector undertaking is not involved in this at all yes yes look at Jyoti CNC of Gujarat nothing delivered I'm gonna come back to Jyoti CNC Agfa delivered 50% of the 10,000 low-cost ventilators they are supposed to deliver and we've already discussed the trivetron case the trivetron is waiting waiting after having invested the money now the interesting part was HLL imposed a deadline of the 30th of June by which these ventilators were to be delivered now you hear here is a 40-year-old company selling ventilators called Allied Medical Limited which accepted which received an order for 350 ventilators and said we can't supply more because you have a 30th of June deadline right yeah yeah but then HLL after insisting on a deadline then relaxes this deadline for the companies that have won the bids I mean what can you say to this kind of utterly arbitrary behavior and I mean I don't think it's just arbitrary you're once again we're coming back to that point you're dealing with the lives of critically ill people yeah you know unfortunately you quite rightly pointed out I would say this is completely perplexing this is inexplicable and HLL life here actually owes the public duty to the citizens to citizenry of India to explain every single step of the procurement process which they haven't done those are two of my other RTIs which are pending for example I had asked them that when they kept changing the specifications of the ventilators for which they had called for proposals in March what was the basis on which that decision was taken to keep changing it who are the members who advised that they need to be changing change and please provide a copy of all the minutes of those meetings where these changes were made none of that they haven't even replied it I have submitted appeals also those appeals deadline for replying are also over so now my only request is to go to the Central Information Commission wait for another one one and a half years before the year the matter but of course it's possible to do a court intervention but that's another avenue that needs to be explored but the whole point is this that from what appears on the surface of the entire procurement process you see to the extent of making the tender documents available the changes that went through in the call for bids all of that information is available on HLL website because that's exactly what on which my whole RTI intervention of three RTI applications was based but after that what happened is not available purchase orders not available changes made not available so this is actually a fit case for the central government's premier watchdog at the moment which is functional which is a Central Vigilance Commission to take a look into the entire procurement process of ventilators number one unfortunately the big daddy of the anti-corruption system in the country look for is itself a truncated body one member unfortunately died due to COVID another member resigned replacements have not been made up this is the body which actually was set up in response to the very public demand for having an apex anti-corruption agency with all the powers that that is necessary a to conduct investigation and b to conduct prosecution cbc cannot conduct prosecution so this body actually should be exactly recommend to cbi or exactly yes absolutely now the look pal is something that has not been properly constituted but that is another huge problem so there a there is lack of transparency and unfortunately we do not seem to have any information in the public domain which indicates anything is that is happening in the direction of ensuring accountability for all these decision-making processes there is nothing available right when it is let me come to another example the example of Dhamman one which is a gadget it's not a full-fledged ventilator that is being developed and manufactured by a Gujarat based company called Jyoti CNC automation it figures into yes yes in May 2020 over 900 of these gadgets were sought to be passed off as full-fledged ventilators after they were obtained by various different hospitals in Gujarat mind you the company never said this is a full-fledged ventilator yes but the chief minister of Gujarat Mr. Vijay Rupani he claimed that the the rapid development of Dhamman one by Jyoti CNC automation was a quote unquote glorious achievement of Pradhan Mantri Narendra Modi's make in India dream and this was publicized by the state government on its websites on its media releases now here the manufacturer is never is not claiming all these things the doctor said they have little use for these machines one of these gadgets got fired in a hospital in Varoda in Bhadokra in September and and it's perhaps incidental but this company had in the past been funded by a family of diamond merchants who also happened to have gifted mr. Modi that monogram suit with his name monogrammed on it which he wore when he met the then president of the United States of America Barack Obama on Republic Day on the 26th of January 2015 that that suit was subsequently auction but what does this tell you about the way this country is going on you are some people making money from the pandemic are their profit hearing from the pandemic in the process are they endangering the lives of patients what does this tell you of the so-called Gujarat model what does this tell you about Roni capitalism in this country yeah absolutely you know there is a saying in Canada which cannot actually be adequately translated to convey the sense into English but what it basically means is this that in a certain marriage ceremony which is all you know steeped in confusion and chaos whoever managed to get a meal in the banquet is the cleverest person so that is some substance of this kind of thing so that's exactly what seems to be happening right now for example starting with the advisability of the use of ventilators for treatment of people affected by covid that itself is a big question mark so did we really have to jump in to the whole process of manufacturing more and more ventilators then that was not probably the most advisable line of treatment except in extreme cases so did you really need to commission so much of manufacturing using money that was not provided from parliament sanctioned funds it was actually from donations made by people and made by companies into the PMK fund so this itself is a big question to ask and then I've also heard of the manufacturing process of another company which is also equally controversial if I'm not missing it must be Agwa where apparently they set up in a large hall belonging to Maruti Suzuki factory in the ncr region for assembling these ventilators and supplying them to various hospitals now we don't know which company supplied which ventilator to which hospital that information has been denied but the point of raising this issue is this when there is an instrument as crucial and important as a ventilator are in this standard that they have to match and if there are new players who are coming in is it enough simply for the joint technical committee comprised of medical experts who are not instrumentation experts are is their capability their knowledge their experience adequate to certify the reliability of a machine when we whereas we have a entire authority statutory authority called the Indian standards BIS which is supposed to look at these kinds of matters and their role is completely absent from any of these processes so this gives rise to you know various questions about this including the company that you've mentioned you know which is Gujarat based now of course these are all matters that require a lot of you know explanation and unfortunately we were hoping that you know some of these matters would be raised in parliament during the monsoon session there was no discussion on any of these matters now one of the other worries that is likely right now troubling me this is the last point in response to your question that I'm going to you know make I don't want to hog all the time we now after looking at this way in which the HLL life care has responded to my RTIs the investigation that Huffington Post has done it's on its own and looking at the number of COVID related deaths that have happened so far it's absolutely crucial to actually probe into the causes of those deaths not because of the virus but because of the failure of ventilators the failure of medical treatment in those hospitals how many deaths can be attributed because of the fact that the poor quality ventilators were not able to provide the necessary support for the for ensuring the continued life of the patient these are matters of immense public interest this is another kind of public health emergency which is not actually coming up because of the virus but it's actually coming up because of the kind of response that duty holders in the public sector starting from the highest level of authority in the government of India you know have to perform and they have actually a duty to explain to people what is happening and how many of these deaths that have occurred so far relating to COVID in India how many of them are because of the failure of ventilators okay my my last question and it's in fact an observation as well as a question and firstly we know that the prime minister citizens citizen assistance and relief in emergency situations pm cares fund is not considered a quote unquote public authority and therefore it does not come within the purview of the right to information act at the same time we have information and that has been also obtained under the RTI act which says that over 200 crore rupees has come to this fund from public sector organizations including employees of public sector organizations and these include not just the reserve bank of India it includes seven public sector banks it includes seven of the leading financial institutions and all of this over 200 crore rupees which has gone to the pm cares fund over half that amount has come from the CSR fund that's a corporate social responsibility fund of the life insurance corporation there's money that's come from the general insurance corporation the national housing bank and so on and so forth yet you're saying the pm cares fund is not a public authority and therefore does not come within the purview of the right to information act what do you have to say yeah absolutely it is quite shocking because two of my RTI applications submitted in relation to the basic information the incorporation documents list of donors and how much money they gave and list of payouts from the fund all of this have been rejected simply on the basis of saying that they are not a public authority and therefore they are not covered by the right to information act now this reply has problems at two levels the first of course is the contestation that it is not directly responsible for giving information about the spending and the receipts into the pm cares fund like the PMO for example the PMO is a public authority but they say the pm cares fund is not a public authority okay that's arguable let's leave that aside let's go to the side even if the prime minister is the head even if the home minister and the defense minister and the finance minister etc etc etc members it is quote unquote a private trust or yes all of that does not matter it doesn't come under the whole contribution regulation act etc etc etc so let's leave it for the courts to decide but what about information about the pm cares fund where are those papers lying where is the electronic information about receipts and payouts lying it can't be lying in ether it can't be lying in thin air it would be available in some government office because the initially what happened was before the income tax exemption was granted to the pm cares fund by amending the income tax act to an ordinance an exemption order was given by the principal the chief commissioner for income tax and the address of the pm cares fund was given as the prime minister's office in south block so obviously the files would be lying there and if there are payouts being made through different departments then the files would be lying with those different departments for the purpose of the right information act that still becomes information held in material form by those public authorities so does not matter whether pm cares fund is a public authority or not since that information is physically available with these various public authorities well established already under the RTI act that information still will have to be given to the people and then the very the my last argument the very audacity of the officers to tell the very people who've made donations into the pm cares fund saying we will not tell you who gave how much and we will not tell you how we have made payments using your money that is nothing but sheer arrogance it's the arrogance of power that cannot be the way in which rule of law needs must be respected in this country that cannot be the way in which accountable governance must be conducted it's completely anathema to the very idea of responsible and accountable government that is at the very foundation of democratic processes that is my biggest worry that why is it that the officers you know the honorable prime minister has an entire section on his on the website saying quest for transparency but when you ask information the babu sitting in the office are all refusing access to information about these things so there is a complete disconnect between the political will for greater transparency and the implementation of that political will to the bureaucracy I don't know who is responsible for this but the end result is that you are not getting information on most of these crucial public interest matters when the country is going through an unprecedented public health emergence I several generations have not looked at this kind of emergency situation ever and it's not anywhere near complete no anywhere near closure and that is what the honorable finance minister has said today no end in sight so is this going to continue like this Venkatesh thank you so much for speaking too much I would use even stronger language than what you I mean to me this is a shocking scandal the manner in which public money people's money has been used to procure ventilators and I do not know when those responsible for watching up this entire process of procurement would be held answerable and accountable for their actions time alone will tell thank you once again Venkatesh you've just heard and watched Venkatesh Naik he's a an activist who's been using the right to information act for several years now he works with the commonwealth human rights initiative and he's also a co-convener of the national 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