The Centre “ignored” “multiple early warning signs” {that a} second wave of Covid-19 might hit India arduous and “declared victory” towards the pandemic “prematurely”, main to the current state of affairs, senior Congress chief Rahul Gandhi stated on Saturday.
Having accomplished that, the federal government is now “missing in action” Rahul stated.
“There were multiple early warning signs. Forget the signs, scientists clearly warned the government this would happen…they (government) ignored them,” Rahul informed PTI in an interview. “We could and should have been much better prepared. And now, where is the government in this crisis? It is completely missing in action. They are obsessed only with saving the Prime Minister’s image and blaming others.”
“The new buzzword is that the system has failed. Who is this system’? Who runs the system? It’s just a ploy to avoid admitting responsibility,” he stated.
The Congress chief stated Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “absolutely” at fault, as he runs a extremely centralised and personalised authorities equipment which is “solely and substantially devoted to building his own brand, is utterly focused on imagery rather than substance”.
He stated: “The fact is that this government completely failed to understand or to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic — right from the beginning, despite repeated warnings…. The PM had an entire year to better prepare, protect India, and think through this crisis, but what did they do? Did the PM and the government add sufficient oxygen capacity, ramp up testing, increase hospital beds, ventilators?”
He requested, “Did the PM think long-term about the state of our health infrastructure and start building for the sort of subsequent corona waves that almost every country was experiencing?”
“It was sheer luck that we emerged out of last year’s nightmare, to a point where we had less than 10,000 new cases in a day early in 2021,” Rahul stated. “We were not testing enough then. We are not testing enough now. Where was the preparation for this massive second wave? Why were the jumbo facilities put up last year dismantled? Why did they raise oxygen exports over 700% – think of that number — 700%, in the months before this brutal second wave?” he stated.
Rahul alleged that the federal government was each grossly negligent and blindly overconfident. “The BJP announced the end of the pandemic and congratulated the Prime Minister for his success even as the second wave was just beginning. The Prime Minister himself is on record as having said that India had successfully fought the pandemic and won. In reality, there was no coherent strategy.”
Referring to the vaccine scarcity, he stated it’s nothing however failure to plan and execute. “The biggest problem of this government is it announces and then absconds. Now that the situation is completely out of control, they have dropped the ball and thrown it to the states. They have made the states and citizens truly aatmanirbhar — Rely on yourself is the motto…”