Hours after visiting a Mohalla Clinic and praising the Delhi government’s primary healthcare model on Friday, Karnataka Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao changed his stance and called the facilities “overhyped”.
In response, the Aam Aadmi Party said its Karnataka team visited a Namma Clinic run by the Congress government in Mr. Rao’s Assembly constituency and found that it “lacks good facilities”.
The exchange comes at a time when AAP and the Congress recently joined as partners in the INDIA bloc against the NDA government.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Rao accompanied Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj to a Mohalla Clinic at Panchsheel Park and told reporters that the model was functioning very well. Both Ministers said that the States should learn from each other about managing healthcare.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on X said, “Karnataka health minister visits Delhi mohalla clinics. We welcome him and his team. We all have to learn from each other. Delhi will also learn from the good work done by Karnataka govt.”
However, hours later, Mr. Rao said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) , “Visited a Mohalla Clinic in Delhi with hardly any people there. Our Clinics in Karnataka have more facilities including a laboratory to do immediate tests for patients. I guess it is overhyped and I came back feeling disappointed.”
In a statement, AAP replied, “Mr. Rao, during his visit, praised the initiative but then received a phone call. Following the call, he mentioned an important meeting and left the location. A while later, he criticised the Mohalla Clinic. Only Mr. Rao can clarify why his statement changed from after the phone call.”
It added that AAP members in Karnataka visited a Namma Clinic at Ward No. 94 in the Gandhi Nagar Assembly constituency and found that the facility had “hygiene issues and provides only primary treatment for some illnesses like fever”. “Mr. Rao should visit Ward 94’s Namma Clinic... and assess the quality of healthcare services being provided. His claim that the Namma Clinic’s infrastructure is superior to the Mohalla Clinic is false,” the statement said.
Reacting to the development, Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party chief Virendra Sachdeva said the Opposition alliance seems to be breaking before even being formed.
