New Delhi, July 2 : The Tamil Nadu government has moved the Supreme Court, seeking a direction to the Madras High Court to “expeditiously hear and dispose” off petitions against the Centre’s decision not granting 50 per cent quota to OBCs in medical seats surrendered by the state in the all India quota in 2020-21.

The state government has challenged the high court’s June 22 order declining any interim order on the OBC quota row. It had adjourned the matter till July 9, citing that a petition similar in nature is scheduled to be taken up for hearing before the apex court on July 8.

The state government had moved the top court on June 11, which asked it to move the high court. “The High Court has erroneously acceded to representations made by the respondents and unjustifiably kept the Petitioner’s writ petition in abeyance till this court issues orders in an ostensibly identical matter in Saloni Kumari v Director General Health Services & Ors which is tentatively listed for July 8,” said the Tamil Nadu government in its plea.

The state government contended that it seeks directions to provide 50 per cent reservation for Backward Classes, most Backward Classes and the Denotified Community in admission to shared seats in postgraduate, undergraduate and diploma medical and dental courses.

Various political parties and the Tamil Nadu government have challenged the Centre’s decision not granting 50 per cent reservation to OBCs as per state law. “Moreover, the High Court has ignored the fact that this court, in an order dated June 11 has, instead of entertaining the petitioner’s petition under Article 32 of the Constitution, expressly granted liberty to the Petitioner to seek relief before the High Court under Article 226,” said the state government plea.

A group of petitioners, in their interim prayers in the Madras High Court, attempted to stop the ongoing process of admissions in postgraduate medical courses.

Reportedly, the Madras High Court had declined to pass any interim order on the petitions after taking on record the Centre’s contention that from 1986, reservation has not been provided in the AIQ (All-India quota) seats for medical admission, which is in accordance with the directive of the top court.

Mumbai, July 2 : Maharashtra’s daily Covid-19 cases scaled a new record of 6,330 – up from Wednesday’s high of 5,537, with Mumbai’s tally crossing the 80K mark, health officials said here on Wednesday.

The number of fatalities in the state were 175, taking the state death toll to 8,178 and total cases zoomed to 186,626 till date, both being the highest in the country.

Thursday”s figures work out to roughly one death recorded every 11 minutes and a staggering 264 new cases notched every hour in the state.

However, the recovery rate improved from Wednesday”s 51.67 per cent to 54.21 per cent while the mortality rate stood at 4.38 percent.

July has started with three-digit highs of deaths and over 5,000 new patients, causing major concerns among the health officials.

The Health Department said of the total number of cases declared till date, 77,260 are active cases.

On the positive side, the second highest record of 8,018 fully cured patients returned home on Thursday, taking the number of those discharged today to 101,172.

Of Thursday”s fatalities, Mumbai alone notched 58 deaths – pulling up the city death toll to 4,689 now, while the number of Covid-19 positive patients here shot up by 1,554 cases to touch 80,699.

There were 24 deaths in Pune, 15 in Aurangabad, 10 in Jalgaon, six in Thane, five in Satara, two each in Akola, and Jalna, one each in Nandurbar, Buldhana and Kolhapur.

The MMR (Thane division) continues to see deaths and cases continue to pile up, with a total of 5,863 Covid-19 fatalities so far, while and a whopping 4,268 new patients pushed up the number of positive cases to 133,356.

Thane cases shot past the 40,000 mark to 41,349 with 1,025 fatalities – to emerge as the second worst-hit district after Mumbai in the state.

Pune district comes third with 24,432 patients and 807 deaths till now. But Pune division ranks second (after MMR) with 28,281 patients and 1,123 fatalities.

Nashik division has 555 fatalities and 9,977 positive cases, followed by Aurangabad division with 295 deaths and 6,834 cases, and Akola Division with 134 fatalities and 2,853 cases.

Kolhapur division has notched 55 deaths and 2,136 patients, Latur division had 48 fatalities and 1097 cases, and finally, Nagpur division recorded 18 deaths and 1,995 cases.

Among the eight divisions, only Nagpur and Latur recorded zero fatalities, though there were new Covid-19 positive cases.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home-quarantine decreased sharply to 572,032 now, while those in institutional quarantine increased to 41,741.

The state notched a new landmark in testing, achieving one million plus with 10,20,368 tests, with analysis being done in 114 laboratories comprising 64 government labs and 50 in the private sector.

Of the total 90,56,173 tests conducted in the country or 6,334 tests per million, Maharashtra’s share is 10,20,368 (11.26 percent), with 7,715 tests per million population, said officials.

New Delhi, July 2 : The Delhi Plasma Bank clarified on Thursday that it does not charge any amount for providing plasma to the patients, after a document started doing the rounds on social media where it was mentioned that the bank would charge Rs 25,000 from private and corporate hospitals against the plasma provided to them.

The Delhi Plasma Bank is the first in the country to store and provide plasma on demand to Covid-19 patients. The bank, inaugurated on Thursday, has been set up at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS).

On Thursday evening, a document started getting shared on Twitter and Facebook, which mentioned that the private and corporate hospitals would have to pay Rs 25,000 to receive plasma from the bank.

The document was drafted on the letterhead of the ILBS Hospital and was also uploaded on the website of the hospital. After the upload, it was downloaded and widely shared on Twitter and Facebook. However, it was taken down by the ILBS administration later, stating that it was a “clerical error”.

Shantanu Dubey, in-charge of issuing plasma to the patients, told IANS that the document was an old and unapproved proposal.

“It was a proposal floated a few days ago to the management of the hospital. It did not get approval and was mistakenly uploaded on the hospital”s website on Thursday. However, we have rectified it,” he clarified.

Dubey also said that ILBS is providing plasma free of cost to all. “We are not charging for plasma from anyone. It”s being offered on-demand free of cost,” he added.

Dubey said the bank issued three sets of plasma on Thursday, all to corporate hospitals, without charging any amount. “We provided two B blood group plasma and one from the A blood group,” he informed.

He also informed that six requests of plasma are lined up for Friday. He said the bank has received requests for plasma from across the country, but currently, it will only issue it to the patients in Delhi.

Meanwhile, the bank has directed all the hospitals to appoint nodal officers for making requests for plasma from the bank.

“A few hospitals have appointed nodal officers. The communication regarding issuance and donation will be made only to the nodal officers,” said Rahul Borkar, a resident medical officer in the plasma bank.

The officials at the plasma bank also informed that they will provide travel allowances to the donors coming to the bank to donate their plasma. “We will reimburse up to Rs 1,500 of the travel cost borne by the donor,” Borkar said.

To donate plasma, a donor needs to complete at least 28 days post the treatment of Covid-19. A donor can re-donate plasma after 14 days.