Ravi Shankar Prasad hits out at Rahul Gandhi, says Congress-ruled states imposed lockdown first

Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday had said the aim and purpose of the nationwide lockdown has “failed” and asked the Centre to spell out its strategy now to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Taking on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for calling the nationwide lockdown a “failure”, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad Wednesday said the Congress-ruled states were among the first to impose lockdown in the country.

“The first state to announce a lockdown was Punjab followed by Rajasthan. And now Maharashtra and Punjab were the first ones to extend the lockdown till May 31, even before the meeting of chief ministers with the Prime Minister.

“Rahul Gandhi ji, you say lockdown is not the solution, then don’t you explain this to your chief ministers? Or don’t they listen to you, or they don’t give your opinions any weightage?” the minister said.

Prasad also said both the central and state governments are doing their best to control the pandemic and are ready to consider “better solutions” to improve the situation.

Gandhi on Tuesday had said the aim and purpose of the nationwide lockdown has “failed” and asked the Centre to spell out its strategy now to contain the spread of coronavirus. He also said “haphazard” lifting of the lockdown could result in a second wave of the pandemic in India — one which could be “extremely devastating.”

Earlier in the day, Gandhi held a video conference with health experts Professor Ashish Jha and Professor Johan Giesecke over the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on India. While, Jha is professor of Global Health at TH Chan School of Public Health and Director, Harvard Global Health institute, Giesecke is the former chief scientist, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

While Jha exuded confidence that a vaccine will be available in a year’s time, Giesecke said India should practice a lockdown that is as ‘soft’ as possible, as a severe lockdown will ruin its economy very quickly.

“The situation that India is in, I think, you should have a soft lockdown, as soft as possible,” Giesecke said.

“I think for India, you will ruin your economy very quickly if you have a severe lockdown. It is better, skip the lockdown, take care of the old and the frail…,” he added.

Jha said the coronavirus is a ’12-18 months’ problem and may last till 2021. He also called for the need for aggressive testing strategy for high-risk areas.

“When the economy is opened up after lockdown, you have to create confidence among people,” Harvard health expert Ashish Jha told Gandhi.

Gandhi, while interacting with the experts, said life is going to change post COVID-19. “If 9/11 was a new chapter, this will be a new book,” he remarked.

On Tuesday, Gandhi had slammed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for his remarks that states seeking to employ migrant workers from UP in the future will need to take his government’s permission.

(With PTI inputs)