Kasaragod: A high court division bench had dismissed a public interest litigation challenging a government order allowing local bodies to donate money to a CPM-controlled cooperative hospital, saying the hospital will provide quality and affordable health care to the people in Kasaragod district.
The CPM-controlled Kanhangad Cooperative Hospital in Kanhangad can now raise up to Rs 24.5 crore from the 48 local bodies in Kasaragod district. If the local bodies controlled by the Congress, IUML, and the BJP decided to ignore the government order, the hospital can still legally raise up to Rs 14 crore from local bodies controlled by the Left Democratic Front.
The high court judgment has stumped the opposition parties. District Congress president P K Faisal had called the government order a "misuse of power to help grow cooperative societies controlled by the CPM".
IUML leader and former district panchayat president A G C Basheer said the government order was unprecedented.
BJP state secretary K Shreekanth, who filed the PIL, said he was considering moving the Supreme Court against the high court order. "It will be an expensive exercise but I may have to do it," he said. "Most of the cooperative societies are controlled by political parties and this order can set a wrong precedent to transfer public money to party-controlled cooperative societies," he said.
Shreekanth said the petition was taken up by the bench headed by chief justice S Manikumar on April 12, the last day before the court went on vacation. Justice Manikumar retired on April 23.
The other judge on the bench was Justice Murali Purushothaman.
The government order was issued by the Department of Local Self Government in April 2022, when M V Govindan was the minister. He is now the CPM's state secretary.
The order said Kanhangad Cooperative Hospital needs financial help and the local bodies can donate from their 'own fund' for the cause, with the approval of their boards or councils.
The order also set the limit for the local bodies. It said the District Panchayat can donate Rs 1 crore; Kanhangad municipality (controlled by the LDF) can donate Rs 2 crore; the other two municipalities (Kasaragod and Nileshwar) and the 38 grama panchayats can donate Rs 50 lakh each, and the six block panchayats can donate up to Rs 25 lakh.
The same government order said the donation limit was proposed by the hospital management, which is a group of CPM leaders from Kanhangad.
Shreekanth, who was the BJP's Kasaragod district president, said the hospital society, registered in 2001, had been in limbo during all these years till the government issued the order granting permission to the local bodies to transfer money from their "own fund" to the hospital.
The order was issued at a time when the construction of Kasaragod medical college was held up for not paying the civil contractor, and other government hospitals such as the primary health centres, community health centres, the District Hospital, and the General Hospitals are reeling under fund crunch and staff shortage, he said in his petition.
But the Local Self Government Department's Principal Secretary in the government's affidavit said the "well deliberated and examined" order was issued in the larger public interest.
"The existing health infrastructure in the district is not enough to cater to the present requirement... The government has already started the process of upgrading the state healthcare infrastructure to global standards. The government has already identified the inadequacy of Kasargod District in health infrastructure and contemplated overcoming the same," the government said.
The setting up of the cooperative hospital "will provide quality and affordable health care to the people in the district of Kasaragod. This was the intention of the government order", it said.
The Kanhangad Co-operative Hospital Society said in court that a cooperative hospital in Kanhangad "would reduce the exploitation of the private hospitals of Mangalore".
During the outbreak of Covid, when Karnataka banned travel across the border, several ambulances were stopped on the Kerala-Karnataka border at Thalappady. Several patients from Kerala died in ambulances, the cooperative hospital said. "Such a situation has arisen only because there is no specialty hospital in Kasaragod," it said, justifying seeking money from local bodies.
The government also told the court the order was only a "permissive sanction" issued to the local bodies to disburse their own funds to the hospital if their boards and councils desired so. The local governments can choose to abide by or not to abide by the order, it said.
Justices Manikumar and Purushothaman agreed with the state government. "The (government) order does not create any burden or compulsion on the Local Self Government Institutions to make financial assistance. Moreover, the State government has a duty to ensure health care for all. Establishment of such a hospital will provide quality and affordable healthcare to the people in Kasaragod district," the judges said, dismissing the PIL.
