Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on April 28 asked people to expose the “blind” system by helping each other.
“By helping each other, common people have show that there is no need to touch hands to touch someone’s heart. Keep extending the hand of help and expose truth of the blind system,” Mr. Gandhi tweeted with the hash tag “#togetherstrong”.
Under home quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19, the former Congress chief also sent out internal message to build a group of *Corona Sewaks* or COVID-19 volunteers.
Using the party’s Shakti platform that has details of lakhs of party workers, Mr. Gandhi asked if party workers would like to enlist themselves as “corona Sewaks” by giving a missed call to a particular number.
One of his message in Hindi read,”In this time of corona, my appeal to Congress colleagues is to leave all political work and engage only in helping the public in distress”.
His message also mentions a phone number where the Congress workers need to give a missed call. Until April 26, a total of 20,000-odd volunteers on the platform have come forward to become corona sewaks.
Nearly 60% of these volunteers are below the age of 40 years and are spread across a dozen Hindi-speaking States, covering 1,586 Assembly constituencies in 357 districts.
The initiative is part of the Congress’ decision to set up control rooms in every district, followed by a central control room on April 25 to coordinate with relief efforts with the Pradesh Congress Committees (PCCs).
It also follows the massive response to the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) relief efforts under the hash tag “#SOSIYC” started by the IYC chief, B.V. Srinivas.