Who is responsible, ask Gandhis

New Delhi

Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his sister general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday shot a googly at Prime Minister Modi, asking him "who is responsible" for all wrong happening to India.

In a common hashtag @ZimmedarKaun, Rahul said the man who is silent despite pandemic, inflation and massive unemployment needs a reply from the nation as to who is responsible.

A step further, Priyanka tweeted: "The Prime Minister of India has behaved like a coward. He has let out our country down. Indians do not come first to him, politics does. Truth does not concern him, propaganda does."

"The time has come for us to ask him: Zimmedar Kaun?" she added.

In another tweet by Priyanka on "crisis of leadership," Priyanka reproduced excerpts from a celebrated Hindi poet in his novel "Kulli Bhaat," describing the grim scenes that unfolded during the Spanish Flu epidemic 100 years ago. He then wrote: "‘The waters of the river Ganga were filled with corpses. There was no wood left in crematoriums to cremate the dead. In the blink of an eye, my family had vanished from before my eyes."

Priyanka said: "These are eerily prescient, even more so now because we live in modern times, when such scenes of collective turmoil caused by an abdication of governance ought to be a thing of the past."

"So, how did we end up witnessing scenes of desolation that belonged in another century? Why were the people of India abandoned by their government, and left to fend for themselves? Why were dead bodies floating down the Ganga, day after day, while the whole world watched aghast?" she asked.

"How did we end up witnessing scenes of desolation that belonged in another century? Why were the people of India abandoned by their government, and left to fend for themselves? Why were dead bodies floating down the Ganga, day after day, while the whole world watched aghast?

"Unfortunately, the Modi government did none of these. Instead, from the beginning of the pandemic, it made every attempt to hide the truth and to shirk responsibility. As a consequence, when the second wave hit us with unprecedented force, the government lapsed into a state of inaction. This inaction enabled the virus to spread with far greater ferocity and cause untold suffering," Priyanka underlined.

• If only the Prime Minister had acted upon the countless warnings he had been given by experts from India and around the world. If only he had listened to the recommendations of his own ‘Empowered Group’, or even to the Parliamentary Committee on Health, we would not have faced the horrendous shortage of beds, oxygen and medicines that we did. Had he cared about those who looked towards him for leadership, he would not have reduced the number of dedicated Covid beds between the first and the second wave.

He would have ordered the tankers required to transport oxygen and prepared for the diversion of industrial oxygen to hospitals.

"He would not have exported millions of doses of life-saving drugs without ensuring provisions for Indian lives first. Families would not have been put through the trauma of desperately searching for help for their loved ones. We would not have lost so many precious souls just because the Prime Minister had not planned and prepared for what was to come.”