KOLKATA: Raising concerns over alleged “misreporting” of Covid-19 data, a group of non-resident Bengali physicians, health scientists and healthcare providers has written to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee , urging her to increase the testing pool.Retired UK National Health Services surgeon Nabakumar Basu, who is one of the signatories, told TOI that all these doctors came together because they felt that the corona situation needed better handling. “I am a doctor in the UK but my roots remain in Kolkata and I remain deeply connected with all that happens in Bengal. We have come together and consciously framed and signed the open letter, urging the CM to look at the situation in a more realistic way,” he said.The letter stressed that the number of “truly affected cases” depended on the “extent of testing, the accuracy of test results and the frequency and scale of testing of asymptomatic cases who may have been exposed”. “Underestimation in the number of truly affected cases may have potentially dangerous consequences,” it warned.The letter came a day after Mamata accused the Centre of supplying “faulty” and an “inadequate” number of testing kits. “Canards are being spread every day that only a few are getting tested in Bengal for Covid-19. This is absolutely false. Faulty kits sent to Bengal have now been withdrawn. We did not even get adequate number of testing kits,” Mamata has alleged.The Bengal government on Thursday informed the Calcutta High Court that the testing scale-up in the state was proportional to the increase in the number of ICMR-approved testing facilities in the state.Health department officials said, of the three types of ICMR-supplied Covid-19 test kits — the rapid testing kits were withdrawn in accordance to an ICMR advisory; then the ‘BGI RT PCR kits’, too, had to be withdrawn on April 21 after receiving a communication from a central agency; lastly, the ‘antigen kits’ were not supplied to hospitals in Bengal.