An aged woman died in a border district in Kerala on Sunday after officials in the neighbouring Karnataka refused to allow an ambulance carrying her to cross over into Mangalore and any hospital there.

The incident has prompted Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to intervene to ensure that “local and partisan vested interests” did not prevail over national interest.

Fathima, 75, was a native of Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district of which Mangalore is the headquarters. She had been to Kunjathur in Kasaragod to see her daughter. Even then, the Karnataka authorities refused to allow the ambulance past the border.

While several patients from Kasaragod have had to return from the border that Karnataka government closed by dumping soil, the death of Fathima has forced the Kerala chief minister to write to the Prime Minister for a second time in a week.

The residents of Kasaragod, the northern most district of Kerala, depend on facilities in the neighbouring Karnataka for health care. They prefer private hospitals in Mangalore, around 15km away, to those in Kasaragod town that lies 30km to the south.

Despite repeated pleas and discussions between the two governments, the BJP-ruled Karnataka has refused to budge, citing the Covid-19 cases in Kerala. Kasaragod was the first district in Kerala that was put under the lockdown.

In his letter to Modi on Sunday, Kerala chief minister and CPM leader Vijayan highlighted the importance of these border roads.

“It has also been reported that in the Mangalore border near Thalapady, movement of an ambulance carrying a critical patient was blocked and the patient died,” he wrote.

In the letter, Vijayan said one of the reasons Karnataka cited was the number of corona cases in the state. “The incidence of Covid-19 in Kerala and border districts is mainly noticed in people returning from abroad,” Vijayan said.

He highlighted the fact that the number of corona cases had been reasonably low compared to the 1.3 lakh under observation.

Being a consumer state, Kerala depends heavily on neighbouring states for food grains and vegetables. While the northern districts depend on Karnataka, the southern districts bank on Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu, too, had disallowed goods vehicles. But officials from both states met on Sunday and sorted out the passage of cargo and other essentials. Unlike the adamant stand taken by the Karnataka government, Tamil Nadu allowed all cargo vehicles to and from Kerala after spraying disinfectants.