The Bharatiya Janata Party has taken exception to the State government placing 27 COVID-19 positive persons in the ‘others’ category as those hailing from other States, and has advised it to merge all of them and stop alleged discrimination on the basis of region.
Party Anantapur district general secretary Duddakunta Venkateswara Reddy said in a release that by naming a group of people from a particular State (Gujarat) would discriminate them in the eyes of the general public. The Central government in its directive had made it clear that any particular community or religious group should not be named while identifying the positive persons.
“There are many people of Andhra Pradesh origin currently in Karnataka, Maharashtra and several journalists in New Delhi who have tested positive and if those States also start discriminating there will be no end to it, hence let us treat them as humans first and put in efforts to contain the spread of the virus rather than trying to hide the numbers,” Mr. Venkateswara Reddy said.
The A.P. government was deliberately dividing the large number of positive cases from Hindupur and showing new positive cases in single digit or none, he alleged.