Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Niranjan Patnaik on Thursday urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to convene an all-party meeting urgently to discuss the Covid-19 situation in the State. He wanted to invite representatives from civil society also to the meeting.
The PCC chief in a letter to the CM mentioned that as the State and the country, being battered by the second Covid wave, have not been able to vaccinate a large section of the population, there are chances of multiple waves of the pandemic in future.He said when rest of the world entered into advance purchase agreements for vaccines in September 2020, the Government of India did rot. Now after wasting eight months, the State Governments, including Odisha, are floating global tenders. “Why wasn't this done earlier?” he asked. “As the pandemic has spread to rural and remote areas having poor health infrastructure, people are increasingly fearful and completely demoralised. We should all come together and do our best,” Niranjan stated. He pointed out that during the first wave of Covid-19, he had requested to call an all-party meeting to discuss a strategy to combat the pandemic and he was waiting for a response. Subsequently, it was learnt that an all-party meeting was being planned. But no meeting has regrettably taken place till now.
Meanwhile, “I came to know from the media that OLA Speaker had called a meeting to take MLAs into confidence. We heard further that the CM had also participated m this meeting. But unfortunately, most of the political parties were not invited and whosoever were called were not present in the meeting,” Niranjan said.
He added that it is difficult for to characterise the meeting as truly an all-party one as it was merely conducted as a formality to pay lip service to the imperative of broad consultation, consensus building and mobilisation of society to fight the pandemic.