The ruling Trinamool Congress has objected to the Central advisory to Bengal over rising corona cases in the State wondering why such advisories were not being sent to BJP-ruled States where the situation is far worse.
Questioning the propriety of “pin-pricking” Opposition States that are working better in handling the pandemic situation senior TMC leader and Minister Subroto Mukherjee said “it is peculiar that the Central Government is always targeting Bengal because it is being ruled by a person called Mamata Banerjee. They should have looked at many other States where the situation is far worse.”
Another Minister Firhad Hakim attacked the Centre asking “why are they not sending such advisories to Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and Delhi … why Bengal continues to bother them all the time… Is it because we are in an election year? Instead of lecturing Bengal they should think about helping the poor so that people do not have to take risks during pandemic situation.”
Blaming the BJP for “contributing to the rise in corona cases in the State for narrow political gains,” North 24 Parganas TMC district president and Minister Jyotipriya Mullick said “in spite of repeated requests from the Government the BJP is breaking all the protocols and organizing public gatherings in the name of protest. This is contributing to the rising corona cases. Their State president Dilip Ghosh who is also an MP is leading from the front in breaking norms.”
Incidentally North 24 Parganas has the highest number of containment zones in the State.
The Union Health Ministry had earlier expressed concern at the rising corona cases in Bengal with Joint Secretary Luv Agarwal writing to State Health Secretary that “Bengal is reporting almost 1600 cases daily and 93 % of the total active cases were reported in the last 4 days.”
The overall “testing testing remains very low vis a vis the national average. An increasing trend in case positivity rate in the last 3 weeks is also a cause of concern,” he added.
Apart from the TMC leadership, Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha too made a comment signifying “satisfactory” situation in the State. The State government was moving at a faster speed” Corona he reminding, “in a state of 10 crore people, we have 660 who are seriously ill” and asking “by any standard, is it a very big number?... This is not a very serious issue. We are very, very capable of handling this. There is no way we will not be able to handle this situation.”
Notwithstanding Sinha’s claims Dum Dum Municipality in the northern fringes of Kolkata have ordered a complete lockdown for the coming week. Apart from this lockdown was extend in the extended containment zones in many parts of the State, sources said.
The Government had added 63 areas to the list of ‘broad-based’ containment zones in the state, increasing the count to 739, amid the strict lockdown clamped in all such places to harness the spread of the disease officials said.
While the number of such zones in Kolkata went up to 32 from 24, containment zones in Howrah and North 24 Parganas the worst affected district were 85 and 113 respectively. There were 21, 65 and 67 containment zones in Hooghly, Nadia and South 24 Parganas all surrounding the State Capital where the number of active cases stood at 5,155 on
Saturday. Containment zones in East and West Midnapores was 19 and 61.
In North Bengal North Dinajpur had the maximum number of containment zones at 76 while Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri having 7 and 11 respectively. South Dinajpur had 11 and Coochbehar had 3 such zones.
There were 46 containment zones in Bankura and 22 in Birbhum.
There were 15 containment zones in Purulia whereas there were none at Jhargram.