NEW DELHI: Coming down heavily on Narendra Modi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the aim and purpose of the lockdown had failed to check Covid-19 spread in the country and the prime minister should explain the strategy for opening up as India was the only country relaxing the lockdown amid rising cases.
Addressing a press conference via video-conferencing, Gandhi said the prime minister was quick to take the centre stage in the early stages of this battle, but now when his leadership is most needed, he has stepped back.
“The PM will accept that his first plan failed. The PM has gone on the back foot, I request him to play on the front foot. The PM had said the war against the coronavirus would be won in 21 days, but 60 days later, it is now clear that the lockdown has not been able to defeat the virus. The number of new cases in many areas around the country is increasing exponentially. Clearly, the prime minister and his advisors had underestimated the scale of the battle India had to launch to defeat Covid,” he said.
The Congress party chief said state governments are fighting valiantly against the virus, but they are struggling because the funding that the central government should have made available to them has not been forthcoing.
Hitting back, the BJP charged the former Congress president of shifting stands on the lockdown. Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said Gandhi is exhibiting hypocrisy since he first opposed the imposition of the lockdown and now is finding problems in the graded relaxations.
“At a time when the country is waging a decisive battle against the national calamity, Rahul Gandhi has resorted to negativism, which the people have rejected long back. The Covid-19 cases were doubling in three days when the lockdown was imposed. Now, the doubling rate is 13 days, which is a success for the lockdown as the containment strategy,” he said. “Rahul Gandhi keeps raising the issue of the migrant labourers. But none of the Congress-ruled states has taken any measures to the benefits of the migrant labourers,” added Javadekar.
‘Infuse cash into hands of people’
Rahul Gandhi said the government must infuse cash into hands of people and it will be fatal if they do not do it. “It is important the government share concrete plans for how it intends to deal with our migrants’ crisis,” he said