The Congress on Saturday formed a consultative group on COVID-19 under the leadership of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The consultative group will meet virtually every day to deliberate on matters of current concern and formulate views on them.
A communication from AICC general secretary said the other members of the 11-member group include former party chief Rahul Gandhi, former Union Finance Minister P Chidamabaram, Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh, Lok Sabha member Manish Tewari, party general secretary K.C. Venugopal, party's Data and Technology wing chief Praveen Chakravarty, Supriya Shrinate and professor Gourav Vallabh. Party's chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala will be its convenor.
The Congress on April 10 had formulated a "Corona Action Strategy" across states to utilise its cadre and organisations to combat COVID-19 on a "war footing", with party chief Sonia Gandhi stressing on ramping up testing to deal with the pandemic.
Sonia has been conducting discussions at regular intervals over video conferencing with all Congress ruled state Chief Ministers and also Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) presidents to devise a comprehensive strategy to combat and contain the virus.
Ever since the lockdown began, Congress leaders, including Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka have been writing letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union government either drawing his attention to certain aspects or coming up with their own suggestions.