NEW DELHI: The Congress party on Saturday asked the Centre to share its exit plan claiming that month-long lockdown over coronavirus has resulted in loss of millions of job loss and huge economic loss. Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled interaction with chief ministers on Monday, the Congress party said the unplanned lockdown of “the present nature” was unsustainable and cannot continue.
“The problem with taking extreme measure without due consideration and planning is that the loss is not just monetary. Much like demonetisation, the unplanned lockdown has cost India dearly,’’ the party said. The Congress party further lamented that ''over 14 crore people have already lost their jobs, millions are expected to in the coming weeks, does the BJP govt have a plan to help them?’’
Taking about the damage the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown has done to the national economy, the party said, ''8.1% of our GDP is the approximate cost of this lockdown. Has the BJP govt paid any attention to this outcome?’’
''It has been one month since the govt announced the nationwide lockdown and in that time hundreds of thousands of migrant workers have lost their jobs and have been forced to endure the most painful of circumstances,’’ the party said.
''Every sector of our economy is feeling the pain of lockdown and the COVID-19 economic challenges but the govt refuses to release a relief package. It has been 1 month since the lockdown started and the businesses of India are still waiting,'' the party said in a tweet.
Every sector of our economy is feeling the pain of lockdown & COVID19 economic challenges but the govt refuses to release a relief package. It has been 1 month since the lockdown started & the businesses of India are still waiting. #1MonthLockdownWithoutPlan pic.twitter.com/dRLNNynOC7
— Congress (@INCIndia) April 25, 2020
The party while endorsing its former president Rahul Gandhi’s remarks that the lockdown is not the solution and it is merely a pause button, asked the govt to inform the nation about their plan for what happens once the lockdown is lifted.
The party said that the Centre should rethink on its lockdown decision and come up with a national plan for coronavirus under the Disaster Management Act. The demand was made by senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who said that the Centre must formulate a national plan for COVID-19 under the Disaster Management Act to deal with the issue.
Commenting on the lockdown announced by the Centre, Sibal said, “It's time govt should rethink on lockdown measures; you cannot have lockdown of people and lockout of the economy.”
It may be noted that the main opposition party has written several letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the phase-wise withdrawal of lockdown and the problems being faced by the low-income groups and migrant labours.
The Congress party had on Friday slammed the government over the freezing of dearness allowance, asserting that it was not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and armed forces personnel.
The Finance Ministry on Thursday froze inflation-linked allowance for 50 lakh central government employees and 61 lakh pensioners till June 2021 due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, DA and dearness relief (DR) at current rates will continue to be paid, it said.
"We should be on the side of people whose dearness allowance is being cut. I sincerely believe it is not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and also on the armed forces people," former PM Dr Manmohan Singh said during the Congress's consultative group meeting whose video was released by the party on Saturday.
Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi also slammed the government over the issue, saying the problem was with the government's going ahead with the central vista redevelopment project. "You are taking away money from the middle class, you are not giving money to the poor people and you are spending it on your central vista," Gandhi told the meeting.
Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said, "When you (government) have not cut back expenditure on the bullet train, central vista development, those are the programmes which should be first put on halt before you halt people's dearness allowance."
The Congress last week had constituted a consultative group with former prime minister Singh as its chairman to deliberate on "current concerns" and formulate views and policy of the party on important issues.
Besides Singh, Gandhi, Surjewala, Venugopal and Tewari, former union minister Jairam Ramesh, Praveen Chakravarty, Gaurav Vallabh, Supriya Shrinate, and the party's social media head Rohan Gupta are also part of the panel.
