West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has acknowledged gaps in government hospital infrastructure after 14 people injured in the Chorebagan Durga Puja crowd crush were shifted from Kolkata Medical College to a private hospital for treatment. Nineteen people died in the incident on Saturday, and the government said the transfer was intended to prevent further loss of life.
Speaking after reviewing the situation at the Health Department’s control room on Tuesday evening, Adhikari said the state’s public hospitals did not yet have facilities comparable to private hospitals. He said it would take about two years to bring government hospital services up to that level.
The injured were initially taken to Kolkata Medical College after the crowd surge at the Chorebagan Sarbojanin puja mandap on 17 October. Fourteen patients were later moved to a private hospital near the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. Two others were reportedly sent to SSKM Hospital. The transfers prompted questions from sections of the medical community about the decision to move patients out of the public system.
Adhikari defended the government’s decision, saying the priority had been to save lives after the 19 deaths. “We wanted to provide the best possible medical service to the patients,” he said, adding that the private hospital had better arrangements for the required treatment than Kolkata Medical College. He also said no further deaths had occurred after treatment began.
The chief minister separately pointed to wider shortcomings in the state’s hospital system. He said allergy testing was still unavailable in West Bengal and that patients, including himself, had to travel to Mumbai for the test. He said the government had begun work on the facilities required to address the gap.
The episode has also raised questions about the absence of a clearly stated protocol for shifting large numbers of emergency patients between public and private hospitals. Utpal Bandyopadhyay, secretary of the Association of Health Service Doctors, said doctors had received different accounts of how the Chorebagan patients were transferred. One explanation was that families were offered a choice of treatment location, while junior doctors reportedly said they acted on instructions from their units and department heads.
Bandyopadhyay said the government should issue guidelines defining which patients can be treated in government hospitals and when they should be moved elsewhere. He questioned whether the public system would be able to manage a similar mass-casualty event in the future and said the government should assess whether all the patients transferred to the private hospital genuinely required treatment outside the public system.
Debashis Haldar, a prominent face of the RG Kar movement, said shortages in government hospitals predated the change in government but alleged that the availability of essential medicines had deteriorated further since the new administration took office. The Medical Service Centre’s secretary, Biplab Chandra, said healthcare workers wanted measurable improvements rather than assurances.
Following the Chorebagan incident, medical teams have been deployed at major Durga Puja venues in Kolkata. Adhikari said several doctors and health workers had cancelled their Puja leave to support the emergency response. The government’s stated next step is to improve public hospital infrastructure over the coming two years and strengthen emergency arrangements at large public gatherings.
