Opposition demands national plan for post lockdown situation

New Delhi, 27 April 2020 [Fik/News Sources]: Ahead of the Prime Minister meeting with Chief Ministers on Monday, opposition parties on Sunday said that as India is preparing to exit the 40 day lockdown, the central government should present a comprehensive, holistic plan for the next two month. Congress said the PM would put out comprehensive plan at the meeting with CMs as the virus will not disappear from the country after lockdown. The Communist party of India (Marxist) also suggested various measures to the government for alleviating the sufferings of a vast section of the people.

Addressing a press conference here via video conferencing, senior congress leader and Spokesperson, Manish Tewari said the PM will be meeting with Chief Ministers tomorrow, it is very important for the nation to ask the national government what the plan is going forth.  He said the government was ‘unprepared’ to fight this pandemic as it was not aware of its intensity and severity. He said today is 36 days of the lockdown but  the government has not  formulated a national plan and  shared it with the states and transparently put into the public domain.

He said the government is following policy based on adhocism to deal the pandemic.

“The virus, in the absence of a vaccine, is here to stay and therefore we have to prepare ourselves, we have to prepare our people to live with the virus. Under those circumstances, if we have to live with the virus, what is the best strategy, whereby India can cope with this pandemic, which seems to be unremitting and unrelenting in nature at the moment”?

Invoking the National Disaster Management Act, and National Disaster Management Act, Congress leader said both the laws envisaged that there has to be a national plan, which has to be prepared in order to tackle national disasters, epidemics or pandemics.

He said the country requires a national strategy to deal with this pandemic.

“Till the Government does not put a national plan into the public space as per Section 11, the states will not be able to formulate their plans and similarly in absence of national and state plan, in terms of section 31 of the National Disaster Management Act, the districts will not be able to formulate their plans.”

He also stressed the need of   aggressive testing as there is no other strategy of containing and dealing with the pandemic.

“Unfortunately in India, if you take 30th January, 2020, when we diagnosed or discovered our first case, which was a student who had returned from Wuhan, going forth from that day, we have conducted 5,79,957 tests so far”

He pointed out that testing rate is far below the global average as testing “deliberately” being kept at 39 thousand.

He said RNA kit is the most critical component of the entire testing process while a report revealed that India has now only left 3 lakh RNA kits.

“In other words, India may be without the testing shield, so the government needs to very clearly tell the country that in the last 36 days, how many test kits have been imported or domestically manufactured?”

How have they been distributed across the states? What has been the demand from different states considering the 60% of India’s cases that are coming in from 10 of its biggest cities? He asked.

The congress leader Tewari also raised the migrant workers issue saying government is not having any strategy to deal with 41 lakh migrants, who are in different relief camps.

Meanwhile, CPI (M) general Sitaram Yechury has written a letter to the Prime Minister detailing the measures that need to be put in place in order to fight and defeat the Covid-19 pandemic. He said he is again writing the letter as the PM failed to answer any of the suggestions put forth to him.

“My previous communications to you listing out various measures that the central government must undertake to alleviate the sufferings of a vast section of our people during the lockdown have gone unanswered. In fact they have not even been acknowledged, which is unusual.”

He said the sudden and abrupt announcement of lockdown with a mere four-hour notice has  left both the people and the state governments completely unprepared to meet the grave consequences of it.

He said migrant have lost all means of livelihood and shelter

“Hunger, malnutrition and homelessness continue to plague the lives of crores of our people. Since the announcement of the lockdown we had suggested that the Central government must immediately provide free food to all the needy.”

Huge stocks of foodgrains are rotting in our central godowns. These should be sent to the states for free distribution. Neither of these demands have even been considered by the government with you as the Prime Minister, he added.

He said due to lockdown it has been estimated that the absolute number of unemployed rose from 340 lakhs to 880 lakhs between February and April, i.e., an additional 540 lakhs of people lost their livelihood. In addition, another 680 lakh people have moved out of the labour force.

“Since the outbreak of the pandemic a staggering 12.2 crores of people have lost their jobs and livelihood. During the six weeks coinciding with the lockdown from early March to April 20, the unemployment rate shot up from 7.5 per cent to 23.6 per cent.”

Flagging a number of issues, Yechury alleged that the government is not functioning in accordance with democratic norms.

“Democratic accountability is grossly missing in your style of governance.”

He also alleged that the PM has shown disdain to the media and people of the country while the world leaders regularly held press conferences to inform their people.

“Finally, Mr. Prime Minister, you have shown a singular disdain to face the media and reply to the concerns of the Indian people, unlike many of your counterparts in the world. Leaders of the government in most countries address regular press conferences and answer questions.”