Sonia, Rahul slam govt over Covid crisis

NEW DELHI: Saying that it was the government that had failed, not the system, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday said the chaos was reflective of the country being "crippled by a political leadership which has no empathy for the people". She also ridiculed BJP for obsequiously and prematurely lauding the PM for vanquishing Covid.
In another letter to the PM, Rahul Gandhi said “hubris” on his (Modi) part had “placed India in a highly dangerous position” and made another national lockdown “inevitable”. Sonia demanded that the PM call an all-party meeting on Covid.
The Congress chief demanded that parliamentary standing committees be convened to "ensure collective action and accountability".
Addressing the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting, Sonia said, "The Modi government has failed the people of our country... Tackling this crisis requires able, calm and visionary leadership. The nation is sinking under the weight of the Modi government's indifference and incompetence... It is utterly shocking to see the Modi government abdicate its moral obligation and its sworn duty towards the people."
The strong words, with Congress members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha listening in, were in line with Congress's recent offensive against the government in which leaders from Sonia to Rahul Gandhi to former PM Manmohan Singh have blamed Modi's lack of attentiveness and planning, and triumphalism for the virus gone wild.
Sonia said BJP government's empowered groups and national taskforce had warned of a second wave of the pandemic while the parliamentary standing committee on health had raised alarm over the lack of preparedness. "But the PM arrogantly boasted that he had defeated the pandemic and his party obediently felicitated him for his so-called success," she lamented.
In his letter to Modi, Rahul said "uncontrollable spread of the virus" would be devastating not just for India but the entire world and urged the government to use "genome sequencing" to track the virus, assess efficacy of vaccines against mutations and to "keep the rest of the world informed".
Senior Congressmen Mallikarjun Kharge and Abhishek Singhvi were wary of Rahul's reference of "national lockdown" and plumped for local and regional lockdowns. Rahul wrote that India's size and genetic diversity made it a fertile ground for virus mutation and that mutant strains were "only the beginning, I fear".
Sonia told MPs that the government did not beef up health infrastructure during the last one year, while allocating crores for non-essential projects (an apparent reference to the Central Vista).