PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi’s remarks in Parliament Monday on Covid administration, accusing Opposition governments of instigating migrants to go away and escalating the unfold of an infection, set off a brand new confrontation between the Center and states.
While Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described Modi’s assertion as “an outright lie”, not less than three ministers from Maharashtra stated the Prime Minister was distorting actuality “with an eye on elections in five states”.
Referring to the preliminary days of the pandemic in his Lok Sabha speech, Modi focused the Congress and stated the celebration “crossed all limits in this time of Covid-19”.
“During the first wave, when the country was following lockdowns, when WHO was advising people across the world, all the health experts were suggesting that people should stay where they are…because if a person infected with coronavirus travels, he would carry the infection with him. At that time, Congress leaders stood at stations in Mumbai and distributed free train tickets and encouraged migrants to leave Mumbai so that the burden on Maharashtra can be reduced. You are from UP, you are from Bihar, go and spread corona there. You committed this big sin…You pushed our laborer brothers and sisters into great difficulties,” he stated.
Moving on to Delhi, Modi stated: “At the time, there was a authorities in Delhi, the federal government that’s there even now, which despatched out jeeps with loudspeakers to jhuggy jhopri (slum) colonies and advised them that there was an enormous drawback, run away. It requested them to return dwelling and return to their villages. They supplied them with buses to go away Delhi and left them halfway, creating a number of issues for staff. Because of this sin, corona unfold at a quicker tempo than earlier than in UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab, and attacked individuals.”
Speaking within the Lok Sabha. Watch https://t.co/WfOOasml0G
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) February 7, 2022
The response from the 2 states was swift and sharp.
Kejriwal posted on Twitter: “The Prime Minister’s assertion is an outright lie. The nation hopes that the Prime Minister will probably be empathetic in direction of those that confronted hardship due to Covid and those that misplaced family members. It does not swimsuit the Prime Minister to politicise the ache of individuals.”
In Mumbai, Congress chief and Maharashtra Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat stated the Center “shied away from its responsibility and left the workers to die”. He stated the lockdown was “imposed without preparation”.
“After that, the scenario of our brothers from UP and Bihar in Mumbai and Maharashtra received worse and so they had been ravenous. We are happy with the assist supplied by the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi authorities and the Congress to the migrant staff throughout the Corona interval,” Thorat stated.
NCP chief and State Minister Nawab Malik stated: “Modiji is responsible for spreading Covid through the ‘Namaste Trump’ event (in February 2020). Modiji brought Covid into the country. Had he restricted international flights in time, Covid would not have come to India.”
Ashok Chavan, Congress chief and State Minister accused Modi of “making falsely” to “cover up his failures in Corona management and with an eye on elections in five states”.
Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi tweeted: “4 hours before lockdown announced, trains stopped, interstate travel stopped. Migrants — majorly daily wage workers were left stranded. If looking after them — with food and shelter was wrong in the eyes of the PM, then will make this mistake 100 times over… for humanity.”
Significantly, in his speech, Modi didn’t seek advice from BJP-ruled Gujarat, which noticed an enormous exodus of migrants, ranging from March 29, 2020, when not less than 500 staff from Surat began strolling in direction of the National Highway to go to their houses in UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and clashed with the police who tried to cease them.
According to a written reply in Lok Sabha by the Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways, over 1 crore migrant labourers returned to their dwelling states on foot from throughout the nation throughout March-June 2020.
As the exodus spiraled uncontrolled, the Railways, in session with the Union Home Ministry, launched the Shramik Special service on May 1, beginning with six trains from Telangana to Jharkhand, Kerala to Odisha, Maharashtra to UP and MP, and Rajasthan to Bihar and Jharkhand.
According to official figures, 63.19 lakh passengers traveled to their dwelling states in 4,621 Shramik Special trains between May and August. Between May 2 and May 31, Gujarat alone operated 1,017 Shramik trains that carried 15.18 lakh migrants. In truth, a Gujarat authorities video on the evacuation featured the then CM Vijay Rupani saying: “Today, Gujarat accounts for the maximum number of Shramik trains. Perhaps, this is the biggest migration in independent India which Gujarat has done.”
Most of those migrants had attributed their departure to the dearth of a security internet, job losses and worry of an infection even because the variety of infections steadily rose.
It was in response to those considerations that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced on May 13, 2020, the primary a part of a Rs 20 lakh crore “economic package” with “measures for relief and credit support related to businesses, especially MSMEs to support Indian Economy’s fight against Covid-19.”
The subsequent day, the Finance Minister introduced “free food grains supply to migrants for two months” and a “scheme for affordable rental housing complexes for migrant workers and urban poor”. On May 15, 2020, within the third tranche of the bundle, she introduced measures for the agriculture sector.
(With ENS in Delhi & Ahmedabad)
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
