In a sharp rebuke to the Modi government, the Supreme Court of India on Saturday constituted a twelve-member National Task Force (NTF) to streamline the scientific allocation of Liquid Medical Oxygen across the country to deal with the critical shortage of life-saving gas amid a virulent second wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah asserted that the task force has medical experts and doctors from across the country as its members and will have the Cabinet Secretary to the central government as its convenor.

The NTF would be at liberty to draw upon the human resources of the Centre for consultation and information. It would also be free to formulate its modalities and procedure for working, the bench said.

The top court noted that the task force will enable the decision-makers to have inputs that go beyond finding ad-hoc solutions to present problems.

The central and state governments "shall provide complete and real-time data" for facilitating the work of the task force as and when necessary.

The tenure of the NTF will be six months initially, the bench said.

The matter will be heard again on May 17.