The Congress on Saturday urged the Government to formulate a national plan for handling the coronavirus crisis under the Disaster Management Act and alleged that bureaucrats, who do not have any idea about ground realities, were formulating policy for the Centre during the lockdown.
At a Press conference, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said, "You cannot have a lockdown of people, and a lockout of the economy. That is not the way to formulate policy. We are not criticising, we are only saying it is time to rethink, we will support the government in every possible way."
“Bureaucrats sitting in North Block are formulating policies. I am sorry to say they have no capacity to do that as they do not know what is happening on the ground. This top-down approach would not work, it has to be a bottoms-up approach," the Congress leader said.
"Our Prime Minister's limited role, so far as we can see, is addressing the nation from time to time. The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) made no preparations to put in place a plan despite the WHO declaring the virus to be a public health emergency towards the end of January,” Sibal alleged.