VIJAYAPURA: Congress MLA MB Patil on Tuesday slammed the State and Central governments for their failure to handle the Covid pandemic, and questioned the relevance of the Central Vista project at a time when people were dying due to lack of health infrastructure.
“While the nation is reeling under a severe health crisis, the Union government is busy developing the Central Vista at an estimated cost of Rs 20,000 crore. The government should immediately discontinue the project and allocate the same funds to develop health infrastructure. In this amount, 62 crore people can be vaccinated and around 2 lakh ventilator beds can be set up. Does Prime Minister Modi prefer to save people or construct new buildings,” a furious Patil asked.
He also levelled serious allegations against the Vijayanagar district administration, saying, “The death rate is being under-reported deliberately in the district to avoid embarrassment to the state government.” The Bableshwar MLA told reporters that the actual death rate was a thousand times more than what was being reported. Patil urged the State government to announce a Covid relief package of about Rs 10,000 crore to Below Poverty Line (BPL) card-holders, as Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu had done.