‘Excess deaths could be up to 49 lakh’: Experts reject India’s official coivid death toll

News Network
November 15, 2021

New Delhi, Nov 15: India’s excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic could be as high as 49 lakh (4.9 million), according to a new study that provides further evidence that millions more may have died from coronavirus than the official tally.

Experts who have questioned India’s official covid-19 death toll of 4.63 lakh citing Civil Registry Service (CRS) data, seroprevalence studies and other sources, claimed that the country registered anywhere between 27 lakh and 49 lakh excess deaths during the pandemic till June 2021.

Indo-Canadian epidemiologist Dr Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research, University of Toronto, said various data showed that Covid-19 is the main contributor to excess deaths in the pandemic months in both 2020 and 2021.

“The actual numbers are at least three million or substantially higher than what has been officially reported, and with the adjustments India’s Covid deaths per million are close or similar to Latin America,” he said.

Dr Jha and other experts, who spoke at a specially convened panel by the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), said the calculations were made using several sources: CRS data from states, data from the Consumer Payment Household Surveys (CPHS) and surveys by the polling agency CVoter (Since May 2020, the polling agency has been asking households if they have recorded a Covid death).

“In the first wave, there was a modest 1 per cent increase in the number of households reporting deaths but then it abated. Then from April to June, there was a colossal 6% increase in households reporting a death,” said Dr Jha.

According to Dr Arvind Subramaniam, Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, the overall Indian “undercounting was somewhere between a factor of 7 and 10”.

Not all of these deaths were recorded as Covid-19 deaths, said Rukmini S, an independent data expert based in Chennai.

Rukmini said the Indian government's definition of a Covid-19 fatality “covered people who tested positive and then died soon after with a clear progression of the disease”.
Low medical certification

Most deaths in India remain without medical certification, which complicates matters.

Dr Jha, citing the United Nations, said there were about 10 million deaths a year in India out of which 3 million (30%) went unregistered. 

“They are just not counted but this is greater in women where close to 60% of women deaths are not counted. And of those seven million deaths registered, only about 13% have medical certification,” he said.

According to an under-review study on excess mortality in India, Bengaluru suffered an excess death ratio of 2.9 in the second wave.

Many of the excess deaths have since been disclosed in the daily Covid-19 bulletins, with one source in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) saying that “some deaths were held back during the second wave to avoid magnifying already high numbers and inducing greater panic in the public.”

This is borne out by data. During April and May, 4,033 Covid-19 deaths were made public. However, subsequent releases of backlog deaths, including some cases re-evaluated as Covid-19 fatalities by the death audit committee, show that 9,917 deaths actually happened during those two months.

Professor Dr Satyajith Mayor, Director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), and L S Shashidhara, co-organisers of the panel discussion, demanded data transparency from the government.

"These high numbers must figure in our response to the ongoing pandemic and also caution our citizens of the dire consequences of this disease,” said Mayor and Shashidhara in a joint statement.

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News Network
March 29,2024

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New Delhi: The Congress on Friday said it has received fresh notices from the income-tax department, asking it to pay Rs 1,823.08 crore, and accused the ruling BJP of indulging in 'tax terrorism' to financially cripple the opposition party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

Adressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here along with Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh, party treasurer Ajay Maken alleged that the BJP is in serious violation of income-tax laws and said the I-T department should raise a demand of more than Rs 4,600 crore from the saffron party for such violations.

Ramesh alleged that through the 'electoral bonds scam', the BJP has collected Rs 8,200 crore and used the route of 'pre-paid, post-paid, post-raid bribes and shell companies'.

On the other hand, the BJP is engaged in 'tax terrorism', he alleged.

"Efforts are being made to financially cripple the Congress, but we are not going to be cowed down," Ramesh said.

He asserted that the Congress's campaign for the upcoming parliamentary polls will continue and the party will take its guarantees to the people of the country.

"We will not be scared of these notices. We will be more aggressive and fight these polls," the former Union minister said.

Maken alleged that the Congress and other like-minded opposition parties are being selectively targeted by the I-T department, which he described as the BJP's 'frontal organisation'.

The I-T department has launched a premeditated, diabolical campaign against the Congress by reopening matters of old returns on baseless grounds, he said.

Maken said the Congress will approach the Supreme Court soon over the I-T department's demands from it.

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News Network
March 29,2024

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The Income Tax department has issued a notice of approximately Rs 1,800 crore to the Congress party, exacerbating its financial concerns ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections, multiple reports revealed on Friday.

The development comes after the Delhi High Court rejected the party's plea challenging reassessment proceedings for four assessment years.

The new demand pertains to assessment years 2017-18 to 2020-21 and includes penalties and interest. The Congress party now awaits reassessment for three other assessment years, expected to conclude by Sunday, the stipulated deadline, said a report.

Congress lawyer and RS MP Vivek Tankha alleged that the fresh notice of nearly Rs 1,800 crore was served on the party on Thursday without key accompanying documents.

"We received the demand notice without assessment orders. The govt appeared keener to serve us with demand rather than issue us reasons for reassessment," a news paper quoted Tankha as saying. He further added, "this is how the main opposition party is being strangled financially, and that too during the Lok Sabha elections".

Delhi HC rejects plea

The Delhi High Court, on Thursday, dismissed petitions filed by the Congress challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings spanning four years by tax authorities. Justices Yashwant Varma and Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, comprising the bench, stated that the pleas were rejected in line with their earlier decision to abstain from intervening in the reopening of reassessment for an additional year.

The subject matter of the case pertained to assessment years from 2017 to 2021.

In a previous petition dismissed the week before, the Congress party had contested the initiation of reassessment proceedings concerning assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17.

The High Court dismissed the plea, citing that the tax authority had prima facie gathered "substantial and concrete" evidence warranting further scrutiny. The tax department alleged that approximately Rs 520 crore had evaded assessment during these three years.

Additionally, the department revealed that searches conducted on entities, including some purportedly linked to Karnataka deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar and a company in Surat, had uncovered cash transactions involving Congress. These transactions were cited as violations, disqualifying the party from tax exemption available to political parties.

In the absence of exemption, parties are treated as "association of persons" and are obligated to pay taxes on their reported income. Moreover, the cash transactions are included in their total income.

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News Network
March 25,2024

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will face Kerala BJP chief K Surendran in the high-profile Wayanand constituency this Lok Sabha election.

Wayanad, a Congress stronghold, has been with the party since 2009. Mr Gandhi won it in 2019 and retained his Lok Sabha membership, having lost his Amethi seat to Union Minister Smriti Irani.

His rival this time, Mr Surendran, has the significant task of challenging the Congress-Left binary in Kerala's political landscape. Both the Congress and the Left are in a national alliance though they remain rivals in this southern state.

Surendran has contested all three Lok Sabha elections since 2009 and also four Assembly elections. In 2021, he contested from Konni and Manjeshwar seats simultaneously. 

In 2019 general elections, Mr Surendran finished third in Pathanamthitta constituency behind the Congress and the Left. He had lost the 2016 assembly polls from Manjeswaram by merely 89 votes. He also contested a bypoll in 2019, but lost it as well.

He was appointed to head the BJP Kerala unit in 2020 and became the face of the protests against the entry of young women into Sabarimala years ago.

Mr Surendran, who is from Kozhikode, figured in the BJP's fifth candidates' list, which also named actor Kangana Ranaut and former Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay.

Wayanad is the second Kerala seat to see a battle of titans after Thiruvananthapuram, where Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar will face the three-time Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

The BJP has also fielded former vice-chancellor of Sree Sankara Sanskrit University K S Radhakrishnan from Ernakulam and actor-turned-politician G Krishnakumar from Kollam. T N Sarasu, a former educator, will contest from Alathur in Palakkad.

The highlight of the BJP's fifth list was the electoral debut of actor Kangana Ranaut from Mandi in her homestate Himachal Pradesh. The list, which named 111 candidates in 17 states, also featured new joinees like industrialist Naveen Jindal and Mr Gangopadhyay.

Mr Gangopadhyay, who joined the BJP recently after taking voluntary retirement, is the first former judge to join electoral politics. He has been fielded from Tamluk in Bengal and will face Trinamool's Debangshu Bhattacharya, a youth leader who had penned the party's "Khela Hobe" song.

Varun Gandhi, a sitting MP from Pilibhit, has been dropped and his seat has gone to Jitin Prasada, who switched to the BJP from the Congress in run-up to the election. His mother Maneka Gandhi has been fielded from her current seat, Sultanpur.

Actor Arun Govil, who played Ram in popular TV series Ramayan, will contest from Meerut. Union ministers Ashwini Kumar Choubey and General VK Singh too were part of the list.

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