Puducherry, Jan 22 (PTI) Former Puducherry chief minister and senior Congress leader V Narayanasamy on Saturday charged the Union territory government with being responsible for the current unabated rise in daily cases of COVID-19. Addressing presspersons through virtual mode, Narayanasamy said Lieutenant Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan and Chief Minister N Rangasamy had let celebrations take place on New Year"s eve in Puducherry despite being advised by political leaders, including himself, against allowing such gatherings to go ahead. He said thousands of people from other states had thronged Puducherry on New Year"s eve and consequently the virus has now been spreading fast in the UT. "The L-G and Chief Minister should come out with reasons for their faux pas. They have not opened their mouth although I had sounded a warning against letting the celebrations from going ahead," he said. Narayanasamy said the government was taking only a small number of samples for testing every day. "If there are higher number of tests, the actual number of cases would become known," he said. The former chief minister also wanted the Health department to reach out to the villagers in the UT where people unaware of the symptoms of the scourge were keeping indoors. He said there was no strict enforcement of curbs to keep a tab on the spread of the infection. The departments concerned are also very lax and letting people skip COVID norms, he claimed. Instead of being a protector of the health and lives of the people, the government is virtually "encouraging the spread of the virus", the former chief minister said. He also pointed out that the test positivity rate in Puducherry was more than 45 per cent now and the number of active cases was also rising exposing the frailty in testing of the samples. Narayanasamy also took strong exception to the stand of the centrally-administered JIPMER that those seeking health care services in the hospital should first register themselves online. "This is a blow on the purpose of having a medical college here. Online pre-registration is unpractical and unwholesome. The JIPMER hospital should scrap the system and render health care services to people approaching it for treatment," he said. Puducherry recorded 2,446 fresh coronavirus cases on Saturday taking the overall tally to 1,50,316, while three fatalities raised the death toll to 1,901, according to a health department release. PTI COR HDA HDA