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CALCUTTA, India, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Fifteen children have died in a state-run hospital in India's state of West Bengal, sparking a political row on Tuesday between authorities and the main opposition party, which says negligence was responsible.

Officials said the children, aged between one and three, were admitted to the hospital in the state capital, Calcutta, with diseases such as encephalitis and gastroenteritis. They died over a period of three days.

C.R. Maity, director of medical education in the state, told Reuters hospital authorities had not been negligent.

"Most of the children who are brought in to this hospital are already in a critical condition," he said. "I have personally visited the hospital and can guarantee there has been no medical negligence."

Maity said the hospital had only 180 beds, but had to treat many more children.

But the state's main opposition party, Trinamool Congress, said the children had died of negligence.

"The state health minister should resign," Madan Mitra, general secretary of the West Bengal unit of the Trinamool, said. "Why do they admit so many children into the hospital when they don't have the infrastructure or enough doctors to look after them? If this is not criminal negligence, then what is?"

His party has demanded a judicial inquiry into the deaths, but the state's communist government rejected the demand, saying it was probing the running of the hospital.

Many state-run hospitals are overcrowded and poorly equipped, triggering a boom in private medical care in recent years. 

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