West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday once again led from the front in the face of the major tragedy that unfolded in a south Kolkata hospital. She arrived on the scene and took control of the situation. Holding a hand-held mike, she started giving orders. She supervised the shifting of the dead bodies to the state-run SSKM Hospital for post-mortem.
She consoled distraught family members of the patients who had died in the fire.
Some of them insisted that their relatives’ bodies be handed over to them there itself, but she explained why it was necessary to send them to the government hospital for post-mortem.
“They (hospital authorities) may later claim they had died elsewhere,” she added.
She was acting simultaneously as head of the administration as well as the people’s elder sister (Didi). Several state ministers, including Firhad Hakim, Javed Khan and Subrata Mukherjee, as well as mayor Sovan Chatterjee and local MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay were assisting her. “Our government is here and our top priority is a quick handover of the bodies to their families,” she said.
Ms Banerjee then went to SSKM Hospital, where she camped till late in the evening. The bodies kept pouring at SSKM, and the death toll kept rising throughout the day.