Bihar’s Covid-19 toll jumped from 9,665 to 12,089 as the state government revised the figures by 2,424, or 25 per cent, on Friday evening after verifying claims made by the kin of the deceased.

The revision is in pursuance of Patna High Court’s monitoring and directions to state government agencies to adopt better auditing and verification processes.

The majority of these deaths occurred during the second wave of the pandemic earlier this year.

The latest judicial and central government guidelines to decide Covid-19 deaths were also followed in revising the figures.

“Covid-19 has been an emergency situation in which data have been continuously coming in. We noticed some discrepancies in it. All the information was properly analysed and figures were revised. There were also some issues with the death certificates and the causes of death mentioned in them,” director-in-chief of the Bihar health department, Naveen Chandra Prasad, told The Telegraph on Saturday.

Asked whether the revision was related to the several cases filed in the high court airing grievances over preparations to tackle the pandemic and discrepancies in the death figures, Prasad said: “Everything is being done under the monitoring of the high court.”

The spike in the toll figures once again put a question mark on the Bihar government’s management of Covid-19 and the transparency and reliability of the data connected to it.

It had previously been in the dock over the alleged fudging of coronavirus testing figures, and problems in the vaccination drive.

Earlier, the health department had revised the death figures in June this year by 3,951 after a three-week audit undertaken on the directions of the high court. The judiciary had ordered the audit amid allegations that the state government was hiding the number of coronavirus infections and deaths.

The CPI-ML, which conducted a survey in 14 of Bihar’s 38 districts, has claimed that the toll during the second wave was around 2 lakh in the state.

Its findings have been based on door-to-door visits in the villages.

The party has submitted a copy of the report to the high court and the Assembly Speaker.

The state planning and development department figures show a drastic increase in deaths in 2020 and 2021 in comparison to 2019, indicating that over 3 lakh could have succumbed to the coronavirus.

“The sharp jump in death registrations in 2020 and 2021 could have only one explanation and that is Covid-19. It is up to the government to take notice,” a senior official of the planning and development department told this newspaper on the condition of anonymity.

Bihar has recorded 7.26 lakh Covid cases so far, of which 7.14 lakh people have recovered. The recovery percentage is pegged at 98.33 and at present there are only 31 active cases.

The state government is paying a compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the kin of each of the deceased.