In tandem with writing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking express assistance in handling the rising corona cases in Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday demanded his resignation for preferring election rallies over pandemic management.
“Narendra Modi must resign as the Prime Minister for mishandling the COVID-19 situation,” Banerjee said, holding him primarily “responsible for the present situation” because “he did not make any administrative planning for 2021.”
Pointing towards the “terrifying situation” in Gujarat she said “the BJP has failed to handle the pandemic in Gujarat … and now they have spread this to the entire country including Bengal.”
Accusing the Prime Minister of exporting vaccines to 80 countries, Banerjee said, “we have no problem if you help others, but first give it to Maharashtra, UP, Bengal, and other states. But you ignored thatduty,” which implied that “you are only concerned about your image-building exercise across the world.”
Later in a press briefing her senior Cabinet colleague Bratya Basu too said that the official view of the Trinamool Congress was that the Prime Minister had “betrayed the Indians” alleging he exported corona vaccine out to of India when there was a shortage of the medicine in the country. “Instead of addressing election rallies in Bengal the Prime Minister should have stayed put in Delhi,” monitoring and streamlining the situation, he said.
The attack notwithstanding Banerjee on Sunday wrote an express letter to the Prime Minister seeking urgent help to fight the pandemic situation.
The medical urgency expressed in the letter seemed to bear political underpinnings even as the Chief Minister requested “your urgent intervention to ensure that the State gets its requirement of vaccine doses fulfilled at the earliest,” considering a sharp rise in corona cases in particularly view of “coming of large number of outsiders to the State for election campaign and other purposes at the behest of some political parties.”
Banerjee had been accusing Modi and Amit Shah of brining large number of “outsiders” for election campaign without knowing whether they were carrying the disease or not, thereby putting the lives of the people in danger.
Banerjee who referred to her previous letter written in February seeking permission --- that the Centre would not give --- to purchase vaccines directly, wrote in Sunday’s letter that Bengal needed 5.4 crores vaccines, 6,000 vials of remedesivir and other drugs.
“We need around 6,000 vials of Remedesvir and 1,000 vials of Tocilizumab daily. However, at present only 1,000 vials of Remedesvir is available daily and no fresh supply of Tocilizumab is coming,” she wrote requesting the Prime Minister to instruct SAIL a public sector undertaking to ensure a steady supply of medical oxygen too.
Daily of rate Bengal’s corona cases have gone up from a few hundred the last fortnight to about 10,000 per day with the State Health Department on Sunday complaining of shortage of hospital beds and instructing the health facilities to admit only seriously infected patients and send the rest to “safe homes.”