Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday mocked Union Home Minister Amit Shah, a day after Shah asserted that India was in a “good position” with regard to the global coronavirus pandemic.
“India at good position in #COVID19 battle?” Gandhi tweet, with a graph showing that the coronavirus curves of India and the United States had not flattened, unlike those of South Korea and New Zealand.
As of Monday afternoon, India is the third-worst affected country in the world. India on Monday recorded 28,701 new coronavirus cases, taking the total to 8,78,252, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The toll in the country rose by 500 to 23,174. This is the biggest single-day jump in infections so far.
Speaking at the Central Reserve Police Force Academy in Gurugram’s Kadarpur village ahead of the All India Tree Plantation Campaign on Sunday, Shah had claimed that India’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic had been successful, The Indian Express reported on Monday.
“Today, everyone is seeing that, if a successful battle against corona has been fought anywhere in the world, it is in India,” Shah claimed. “Everywhere in the world, only the governments have fought this battle but, in our country, along with the government, a population of 130 crore, all the state governments, and every single person has fought.” Shah asserted that instead of fear, there was a passion among Indians to fight the pandemic.
Gandhi has targeted the government over the past month on a variety of topics, especially its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the Ladakh clash with China and the state of the Indian economy.
Gandhi’s attacks on Centre
On Sunday, Gandhi wondered what exactly transpired that China “took away” India’s land when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at the helm of affairs. Gandhi cited a report by The Wire, which quoted defence expert Ajai Shukla as saying that the government is misleading the media on the Chinese disengagement along the Line of Actual Control, and that the de-escalation process at Galwan Valley is disadvantageous to India.
At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a clash with Chinese troops in Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control on June 15, On June 21, Gandhi accused Modi of “surrender” to China, after the prime minister told a meeting of Opposition party leaders that Chinese troops had not entered India territory.
A week prior to this, the Congress leader ridiculed the “Gujarat model” allegedly at work in the state, saying that it had the highest coronavirus mortality rate in the country.
On July 6, Gandhi claimed that in the future, Harvard Business School will have case studies on failures of the Narendra Modi-led government, such as its handling of the coronavirus crisis, demonetisation and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.
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