On Friday, Congress leader and former President of the party, Rahul Gandhi, said that transparency should be maintained by the central government in its action against the novel coronavirus. He also urged the central government to cooperate with states and involve them as decision-making partners.
On the 2nd of May, the central government came forward with the extension of the nationwide lockdown for two more weeks until May 17th. Activities will be allowed as per the zonal code which is designated by the government as red, orange, and green. Referring to this, Rahul Gandhi in his online press conference, said,
“We need to decentralize power in dealing with the virus. If we keep this fight in the Prime Minister’s Office, we will lose. The Prime Minister must devolve power. If we centralize, there will be a calamity. The Prime Minister has to trust chief ministers and chief ministers have to trust district magistrates.”
In regard to the classification of red, green, and orange zones, Gandhi said that such classification should come from the state government upon the inputs from district magistrates. He also said that in the states where Congress is in power, the Chief Ministers believe that the red zones marked by the central government is actually a green zone on the ground and vice-versa. He further mentioned that because of the distinctions between the zones, the supply chain problems of the businesses is obvious.
Need Transparency from Government, says Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi also questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his press conference asking about the criteria on which the lockdown will be relaxed after the 17th of May. He said,
“The government now has to give a little bit of transparency in its actions. We need to understand when they open, what is the criteria for that, what are the boxes they want to be ticked off before they actually start to open.”
Gandhi called for a psychological change among the people and said the lockdown is not a key that can be switched on and off. He said,
“The disease is dangerous for old people, for those who have diabetes, hypertension, etc. But other than that, it is not a dangerous disease. So we have to make a psychological change in the mind of the people. Currently, people are very scared.”
Source: Scroll.in
