BHUBANESWAR: Health and Family Welfare Minister Prasanna Acharya seems to have been spared the axe after Excise Minister A U Singhdeo quit over the hooch tragedy, which claimed 33 lives. Acharya was among the eight ministers who attended the meeting of the Council of Ministers on Friday to approve the State budget for 2012-13. He accompanied Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who visited the patients at the SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack. Before leaving for Cuttack, Acharya had one-to-one meeting with the Chief Minister at his secretariat chamber for about 15 minutes. The Minister, however, steered clear of the claims that the victims consumed digestives punched with alcohol. The Chief Minister has ordered a judicial probe into the incident and it is not proper to comment on the matter, he told mediapersons here. When asked whether he will follow in the footsteps of Singhdeo, Acharya said, “I am very conscious about my morality. I do not think that I am an immoral person. My morals inspire me to provide good treatment to affected people admitted in hospitals”. On Singhdeo’s contention on Thursday that people who died had taken medicines having alcohol, Acharya said he would not comment on his former ministerial colleague’s statement. Stressing that he did not want to take part in a blame game, he said it was the collective responsibility of the Government to ensure that medicine and liquor were not adulterated. The Health Minister said alcohol content in certain medicines is permissible and its use by pharmaceutical manufacturers is regulated by the Excise department. The Health department has no role in it.“There is a bond house on the premises of every pharmaceutical manufacturing unit. The bond house has two locks. While one key is with manufacturer, another is held by the Excise department officers. Both regulate the alcohol content in medicine. The Health department has no role in it,” he said.
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