New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lambasted the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Central government over its handling of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and said that the Centre “completely failed to understand or tackle the COVID-19 pandemic” while ignoring “multiple early warning signs”.
In an interview with news agency PTI, Gandhi blamed the Centre for the current COVID-19 crisis in the country. "The prime minister is at fault. He runs a highly centralised and personalised government machinery, is solely and substantially devoted to building his own brand, is utterly focused on imagery rather than substance."
"The fact is that this government completely failed to understand or to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic -- right from the very beginning, despite repeated warnings," Gandhi alleged.
The senior Congress leader took a potshot at the government’s 'Aatmanirbhar' slogan and said, “Rely on yourself is the motto. No one will come to help you. Definitely, not the prime minister,". He added that the COVID-19 situation has gone completely out of control for the Modi government, and wondered whether it was their way of making the states and the citizens truly 'Aatmanirbhar'.
Attacking PM Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Gandhi said that they “ignored” rising coronavirus cases, participated in large rallies for the five Assembly polls and encouraged super-spreader events.
“They continuously ignored rising cases and were busy instead with election campaigns. They encouraged super-spreader events. They even bragged about them. Our Prime Minister and Home Minister were not even wearing masks in public over the past few months. What sort of a message is that sending to citizens?" Gandhi questioned.
Further, he said that the central government is "plainly arrogant and focuses on perception over reality".
"Now that the situation is completely out of control, they have dropped the ball and thrown it to the states... The need of the hour is to hold hands, work together and heal our people," Gandhi said slamming the Centre.
"Corona is just part of the problem -- the real problem is that India now doesn't have the capacity to respond to any major crisis because of what has been done to its systems over the last six years," he added.
Gandhi asserted the only solution we have is vaccination and India is 'supposed to be the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world'.
"And yet, India is desperately short of vaccines. We are making them, why were our people not the first in line to be vaccinated? If that is not a failure to plan and execute, what is?"
(With PTI inputs)
