Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday hit out at his Uttar Pradesh counterpart, Adityanath, saying the Aam Aadmi Party government does not give fake coronavirus certificates to citizens like his administration.
Kejriwal shared two screenshots on Twitter. The first was of a report about how the authorities of Bareilly district in Uttar Pradesh were allegedly registering fake names at Covid centres to ramp up its testing numbers. In one instance, 965 people were registered under a single mobile number, which had only zeroes, the report showed.
The second one was a screenshot of a television bulletin on a Hindi news channel, which quoted Adityanath as claiming that Uttar Pradesh did a better job than Delhi in containing the spread of the coronavirus.
“Day and night, the Yogi ji[Adityanath] only see what the Delhi government and the Aam Aadmi Party are doing,” Kejriwal wrote. “Yogi ji, the great work done by us to control the Covid-19 situation [in Delhi] is being discussed in the streets and mohallas of Uttar Pradesh. Unlike you, we do not do fake corona test.”
Kejriwal added that Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia “will take up the rest of the debate” during his visit to Lucknow on December 22. Uttar Pradesh’s primary education minister Satish Dwivedi had invited Kejriwal and Sisodia to visit schools in the state after Kejriwal had drawn comparisons between Delhi and UP regarding the work done in the field of education, according to the Hindustan Times.
Kejriwal’s comments come a day after he announced that the Aam Aadmi Party will contest in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. “What is stopping Uttar Pradesh from becoming a more developed state,” the chief minister had asked during the virtual announcement. “It is UP’s corrupt politicians and government.”
Earlier in the day, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister had hailed his administration’s performance in containing the spread of the pandemic, reported ANI.
“Despite being the most populous state, UP has given the best results for Covid management,” Adityanath claimed. “Two months ago, the state had 68,000 active cases and now, it is less than 18,000.” He also claimed that Uttar Pradesh has conducted the maximum number of tests so far.
Delhi recorded 5,85,852 coronavirus cases and 10,115 deaths as of Wednesday, according to the data collated by the Union health ministry. Uttar Pradesh, on the other hand, logged 5,41,579 infections and 8,103 deaths.
India’s coronavirus tally rose to 99,32,547 on Wednesday as it registered 26,382 new cases in 24 hours. The country’s toll rose by 387 to 1,44,096. India’s active cases stood at 3,32,002, while the recoveries reached 94,56,449. Wednesday’s new cases are 19.5% higher than the previous day.
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