India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Holding Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible for Covid-related deaths to what it called “genocide”, Welfare Party of India (WPI) on Saturday demanded resignation of Modi immediately.
The demand was made during a press conference addressed by WPI national president Dr. Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas and party’s national general secretaries Sheema Mohsin and Subramani Armugam.
They said that Modi, who heads the state and has centralized the decision making, should own responsibility for the deaths and step down from his post forthwith. Over two lakh people have died and over two crore people have tested Covid positive so far but these figures doled out by government departments are said to be very conservative. According to experts, these are not actual figures as various state government have been hiding the actual death figures.
“If he calls himself as ‘chaukidar’ or guard of the nation and heads the ‘system’ running the government, then he is also responsible for the deaths”, said Mr Ilyas, stating that PM should accept his responsibility for the deaths of Covid patients due to lack of oxygen and submit his resignation. He said that there had been occasions when ministers had resigned owning moral responsibility about failures in their respective departments.
Dr. Ilyas called the current situation prevailing in the country as “national calamity”.
National general secretary Sheema Mohsin said that “owning moral responsibility for the deaths, the PM must resign.” She said that her party was demanding resignation of the PM because the power to take decision was totally centralized in the hands of the Centre and hence, it was absolutely appropriate for the PM to resign so that the next person taking over as PM had some sort of fear.
Dr. Ilyas said that Modi got full one year after the outbreak of the first pandemic in India to improve health infrastructure and prepare a strategy to fight the coronavirus menace but it seemed it was not in his priorities. Instead, Modi and his party leaders chose to address election rallies without people observing social and physical distancing norms and the Central government under him and the BJP government in Uttarakhand allowed lakhs of people to congregate and take a dip in the river Ganges despite the fact that the second Covid wave had already started. Not only they allowed people to assemble but also provided facilities to congregate which led to the present state of affairs with regard to Covid. According to figures given by the Uttarakhand government, more than 90 lakh people congregated in the Kumbh festival at Haridwar. Reports say that 90 per cent Kumbh returnees in rural areas of MP, UP and Bihar have been tested corona positive, indicating that the rural areas, that were free of corona during the first Covid wave, might get infected at a large scale. But neither the Central government nor any of the state governments, is putting blame for the second Covid wave on Kumbh and election rallies. They are deliberately silent on it now while a year ago, the same Modi government blamed a Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin responsible for coronavirus spread, thus directly holding Muslims responsible for the Covid infection and indirectly dividing the society on religious lines.
Stating that the central government was not roping in the services of the Opposition parties in fighting the corona menace, Dr. Ilyas said that it only indicated that the BJP leaders were only capable of playing politics of hate and diving the society on communal lines but have no capacity to run the administration. He accused Modi and his government of “mismanagement” of the whole situation.
WPI leaders also held Election Commission of India and the Supreme Court partly responsible for the present situation. “When the government had failed and was indulging into blame-game while at the same time holding big political rallies permitted by the ECI, the Supreme Court should have done its constitutional duty to protect the life of the people. But when the SC acted, it had become too late. They did not act when they were required to act”, said Dr. Ilyas and Ms Mohsin.
WPI leaders demanded to declare Covid pandemic as a “national calamity”, monetary compensation to the next of the kin who lost their lives to Covid 19 due to “government’s apathy and mismanagement”, free of charge vaccine to all citizens, employment and financial assistance to all the poor and marginalized sections who lost their livelihood in lockdowns, stern action against those indulging into black-marketing of Covid drugs and cancellation of licenses of those private hospitals hugely overcharging patients taking undue advantage of the crisis.
