BHUBANESWAR: Even as dengue continues to spread its tentacles across the state capital, the opposition BJP on Tuesday launched a unique ‘mosquito net’ protest in front of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) headquarters to highlight the failure of the Health Department and the civic body in addressing the issue.
Sources said the city had reported over 350 cases of dengue till Monday. Hitting the streets over the issue, the saffron party activists wrapped themselves with mosquito nets and raised slogans against the government.
Alleging that the measures initiated to address the dengue menace in the city were highly inadequate, BJP state spokesperson Dillip Mohanty said both BMC and the Health Department had miserably failed in containing the spread of the disease.
Mohanty said last year when they staged a protest over the same issue, BMC had assured that adequate steps would be taken to deal with it. “However, the civic body has not been able to complete even the basic sanitation and source reduction drive that could have prevented dengue spread by 60 per cent,” he rued.
BJP district president Babu Singh alleged the mayor had assured that there would be no flooding and dengue cases in the city before the onset of monsoon. The city, however, has become a dengue hotspot, he alleged.