The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the darkest periods in recent history, testing the resilience of governments and their leaders. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the central government made every effort to manage the crisis with efficiency—ramping up vaccine production, ensuring oxygen supply, and coordinating relief efforts—the same cannot be said about Delhi’s Chief Minister ArvindKejriwal. A recent CAG report has unearthed shocking details of massive mismanagement, negligence, and deliberate wastage of crucial medical supplies by the Delhi government. This not only exposed Kejriwal’s incompetence but also underscored how his government’s actions led to unnecessary deaths, solely for the sake of political grandstanding against the Modi administration.
During the peak of the pandemic, as thousands of Delhiites struggled to find hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, and ventilators, the Kejriwal-led government remained more focused on optics than on governance.According to Delhi CM Rekha Gupta, warehouses in Delhi are still stuffed with 458 oxygen concentrators, 146 ventilators, 36,000 PPE kits, and other essential medical equipment, all of which have been lying unused since the pandemic. These supplies, worth crores of rupees, could have saved countless lives if distributed at the right time. Instead, they were hoarded, rendering them unusable now, and highlighting the sheer apathy of the Kejriwal administration towards the people it was elected to serve.
Perhaps the most damning revelation is that the Delhi government spent an astronomical ₹12,000 crores on semi-permanent COVID facilities, none of which were ever completed. Despite grand announcements, not a single one of these structures became operational, leaving patients and their families helpless in their most desperate hour. The colossal wastage of public money on incomplete buildings, rather than directing funds toward actual treatment and relief, shows that the Delhi government’s intent was never to fight the pandemic effectively. Instead, Kejriwal sought to build a false narrative of victimhood and shift blame onto the Centre to deflect attention from his government’s abject failure.
It is now evident that Kejriwal used the pandemic as an opportunity to engage in political theatre rather than governance. Instead of working with the central government to mitigate the crisis, his administration engaged in constant blame games, press conferences, and sensationalism. Delhi’s people were suffering, and yet Kejriwal continued to appear on TV making exaggerated claims about oxygen shortages. The truth, as unearthed later, was that Delhi had received more oxygen than it needed, and states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh had to step in to manage the imbalance. This deliberate misinformation not only spread panic but also led to disruption in oxygen supply chains across the country.
As families grieved for their lost loved ones, Kejriwal was busy making baseless demands for more vaccines while failing to even utilize the stock already allocated to Delhi. Instead of ensuring that hospitals were functioning efficiently, his government engaged in reckless spending on advertisements, attempting to craft a heroic image of Kejriwal himself. Delhi residents, many of whom saw their relatives die due to lack of timely medical intervention, were betrayed by a leader who prioritized self-promotion over saving lives.
Even after the pandemic, the revelations from the CAG report show that Kejriwal’s negligence continues to haunt the people of Delhi. The unused stockpiles of medical equipment and wastage of taxpayer money prove that his government was never serious about tackling the crisis. Instead, it used the suffering of Delhi’s citizens as a political weapon against the Modi government, despite the Centre’s tireless efforts to provide relief to all states, including Delhi.
The mismanagement during COVID-19 under ArvindKejriwal’s leadership should serve as a stark reminder of what happens when governance takes a backseat to propaganda. The pandemic called for decisive leadership, swift action, and responsible management—qualities that Kejriwal’s government utterly lacked. In the end, it was not the Modi government but Kejriwal’s inaction and selfish politicking that cost thousands of lives in the national capital. History will not be kind to this betrayal, nor will the people of Delhi forget the way they were abandoned when they needed their leader the most.
Uday India Bureau
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