For the past week, there has been an acute shortage of medical supplies, including dressing gauze and cotton material at the hospitals. These government hospitals, meant to serve the poor, have been hit with increased the fees of between 200 and 500 percent, making treatment for the poor more expensive than that in the private hospitals.

Poor patients are being told to purchase gauze, cotton, injections, ointments and drugs.

Doctors told reporters in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur that they sympathize with the conditions of the patients and said that even a small packet of gauze costs as much as 200 rupees. They blamed Gavit and other senior health officials.

An officiating dean of a government medical college, speaking to Arab News said: “We have no budget to buy medicine, gauze and cotton for dressing wounds and the government is not willing to offer any funds for buying these supplies," he said. "We are helpless. My doctors and residents are so sympathetic toward the patients they pool money from their own pockets to purchase the supplies for poor patients.”

Despite several attempts by Arab News to contact Gavit, he remained elusive.

Arab News and several other journalists also tried to reach NCP supremo and federal Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to come to the rescue of the poor people suffering due to the acts of his party minister and the Congress-NCP led government, but even Pawar was too bogged down in party internal affairs in Mumbai to comment.