"Congress Extended First": BJP On Rahul Gandhi's Advice Over Coronavirus Lockdown

Shortly after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi warmed the centre that a "lockdown doesn't defeat (the spread of the) coronavirus, it only helps stop it for a short while", the BJP hit out at Mr Gandhi, reminding him that Congress-ruled states had extended the lockdown in their respective territories much before Prime Minister Narendra Modi did so at the national level.

"Lockdown is not the solution according to Rahul Gandhi. Then why did the chief ministers of Congress-partnered governments extend the lockdown first?" BL Santosh, the BJP's General Secretary, asked in his tweet.

Last week both Maharashtra, where the Congress is part of the government, and Punjab, where it is in power outright, extended the clampdown on travel and movement. Both states did so before the 21-day lockdown ordered by the Prime Minister last month was due to expire and before the Prime Minister extended it to May 3.

#LockDown is not the solution acc to @RahulGandhi ... Then why did the CMs of @INCIndia Cong partnered govts extend the lock down first ...?

— B L Santhosh (@blsanthosh) April 16, 2020

The centre's decision to extend the lockdown was based on a four-hour video conference with at least 13 chief ministers, including Maharashtra's Uddhav Thackeray and Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal.

All the state leaders who attended that meeting, which includes Bengal's Mamata Banerjee, and others who had not, had indicated they were in favour of extending the lockdown.

In his hour-long interaction with reporters today, Rahul Gandhi also urged the centre to carry out increased testing "aggressively" to contain the infectious COVID-19 virus. Right now, he said, the government was chasing the virus, which would never give the correct picture of the outbreak in India.

"Currently testing levels are too low. I am proposing scaling up testing. One advice to the government is, push testing aggressively. Maximise testing and use testing strategically, to assist states in their fight," he said.

The BJP hit back at those claims, declaring that India's testing rates were better than some larger countries.

"India has tested 2,74,599 samples till 9 pm on April 15," a tweet on its official account said, adding, "This scale of testing at these stages is one of the largest, way more than tests conducted in the US, the UK and Italy".

India has tested 2,74,599 samples till 9 pm on 15 April.

At the benchmarks of 5,000 and 10,000 cases, the number of tests were 114,015 and 217,554 respectively.

This scale of testing at these stages is one of the largest, way more than tests conducted in US, UK and Italy. pic.twitter.com/LG01VFr7JU

— BJP (@BJP4India) April 16, 2020

Last week, random tests on patients with severe respiratory illnesses showed that more and more people, with no travel or contact history, were contracting the virus.

Rahul Gandhi has been a frequent and vocal critic of the government's handling of the health crisis in the country, urging the Narendra Modi government to carry out more testing, care for migrant workers left jobless by the lockdown and ensure the Indian economy doesn't collapse as a result of the virus.

Mr Gandhi also told reporters that "I may disagree on a lot of issues with Narendra Modiji, but today is not a time to get into all this. Today is a time to unite and fight the common enemy".

India has reported over 12,000 coronavirus cases so far and 414 deaths have been linked to the virus.