Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday said that the video conference of members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation on novel coronavirus “left us no wiser” and that India needed stronger measures to fight the pandemic. He alleged that states were ahead of the Centre in dealing with the situation.
“Yesterday I had asked the government to consider stronger and more determined measures to combat COVID 19,” Chidambaram wrote on Twitter. “We got a video conference that left us no wiser.”
Hitting out at the Centre for allegedly not doing enough to contain the virus, Chidambaram said that the state governments are way ahead in their fight against the disease.
“I think the states are ahead of the centre in handling the crisis,” Chidambaram wrote on Twitter. “The time has come for the central government to take firmer, bolder and tougher measures.”
Chidambaram went on to say that the increase in rate of coronavirus cases in India is worrying and called on state governments to compensate for slow response by the centre.
“If the central government is slow to act, state governments must show bolder leadership and announce firmer steps appropriate to the state concerned,” he tweeted, tagging Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his counterparts from Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, Uddhav Thackeray and E Palaniswami.
On Sunday, leaders of SAARC member nations participated in a video conference called by Modi to evolve a strategy to fight the the coronavirus pandemic. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Maldives’ President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, Bhutan’s premier Lotay Tshering, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and Special Assistant to Pakistani Prime Minister on Health Zafar Mirza participated in the video conference. At the conference, Modi proposed setting up a fund to tackle coronavirus and said that India would contribute $10 million (Rs 74.09 crore approximately).
All SAARC nations have reported cases of coronavirus. India is the worst-hit nation in the eight-member grouping with 110 cases and two deaths. Pakistan has 53 cases, Sri Lanka has 18 and Afghanistan has 16. Maldives and Bangladesh have 13 and five cases, respectively while Bhutan and Nepal have reported one case each.
Coronavirus originated in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei province, late last year and has spread to over 100 countries, leading to travel restrictions, lockdowns and cancellation of major events. The World Health Organisation has said that the epicentre of the pandemic is now Europe. Italy is the worst-hit country in the region with more than 24,000 cases and over 1,800 deaths.
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