Former Union Minister Subodh Kant Sahay on Friday said, “The Central Government has given free hand to various institutions to fudge their data in order to conceal its shortcomings, which is a direct case of violation of ethics.”
A news item in a reputed national daily said the head of India’s health research agency had asked researchers to remove infection prevalence information from the 10 cities’ hotspots they had included in their paper.
Medical ethics experts view the council’s is a violation of its own rules on research integrity and the irony is that this is the agency tasked with writing medical ethics codes for India.
The former Union Minister targeted the Modi government by saying that the people of the country have the right to know the truth.
The Central agencies are becoming the mouthpiece of the Government rather than working independently.
He added, “The abrupt nationwide lockdown with a four-hour notice had brought misery and tragedies to many and the country’s health research community has been misused to portray the lockdown as a success.”