The Delhi High Court has voiced its discontent with the dismal state of health infrastructure in the capital, particularly because of the acute staffing crisis. During a hearing, the court told the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi to hold an urgent meeting with the Health Minister and senior bureaucrats to discuss the recruitment of 38,000 additional health workers, which is urgently needed considering the present demands on public health. The case had arisen out of a PIL that had pointed to acute deficiency of healthcare staff in government hospitals of Delhi. The petitioners had contended that lack of adequate staff was resulting in deteriorating healthcare services with patients receiving delayed and substandard treatment. The crisis was further heightened at present because of the ongoing pandemic, which had put additional pressure upon an already overburdened healthcare system. Observations of the Court During the hearing, the High Court came down heavily on the condition of the healthcare infrastructure, stating that it was "dismal." Expressing its disappointment at the lack of progress in recruiting the required health workers, the court said the bureaucratic red tape and lack of coordination between different government departments were major obstacles in finding a solution to the problem. The court took particular umbrage over the apparent lack of urgency on the part of both the Health Minister and the LG, given the self-evident and urgent need for more healthcare workers. It told both governments that no citizen should be made to suffer on grounds of administrative inefficiency or political differences. What this rebuke really implied was that these issues should have been sorted out internally by the Delhi government without the judiciary being forced to intervene. Orders Issued Exasperated, the High Court directed that the LG should now hold a meeting with the Health Minister and concerned bureaucrats to hasten the recruitment process. According to the court, it should not be an eye-washing exercise; as an outcome of this meeting, concrete steps should be taken towards the filling of 38,000 vacancies in the health sector. The judges also warned that failure to comply with the court's orders would lead to further legal action against the officials responsible. Implications The court's intervention thus brings into focus the continuing problems in Delhi's health sector, where administrative inefficiencies have translated directly into the quality of care the citizens can access. Immediate action on the recruitment front will partly assuage the staffing shortages, though the success of this directive will depend on the political and administrative will to follow through. The case underlines how specially essential for the capital city of Delhi is good governance over public health. The courts are thus intervening to express increasing impatience with the state of affairs and pressing for actual results in changing capital health.