Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s remarks in Parliament Monday on Covid management, accusing Opposition governments of instigating migrants to leave and escalating the spread of infection, set off a new confrontation between the Centre and states.
While Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described Modi’s statement as “an outright lie”, at least three ministers from Maharashtra said the Prime Minister was distorting reality “with an eye on elections in five states”.
Referring to the initial days of the pandemic in his Lok Sabha speech, Modi targeted the Congress and said the party “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 labourer brothers and sisters into great difficulties,” he said.
Moving on to Delhi, Modi said: “At the time, there was a government in Delhi, the government that is there even now, which sent out jeeps with loudspeakers to jhuggi-jhopri (slum) colonies and told them that there was a big problem, run away. It asked them to go back home and return to their villages. They provided them with buses to leave Delhi and left them midway, creating several problems for workers. Because of this sin, corona spread at a faster pace than before in UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab, and attacked people.”
