Opposition leaders on Monday called out Prime Minister Narendra’s speech in Parliament wherein he accused the former of committing a sin during the Covid-19 pandemic by pushing migrant labourers to leave Delhi and Mumbai, thereby further spreading the viral disease according to hindustantimes.com.
Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (convener) Arvind Kejriwal said, "The PM’s statement on how his government sinned by his government asking poor people to leave the national capital was false.
Tagging a clipping of the PM’s speech on Twitter, Kejriwal wrote in Hindi, “The PM’s statement is completely false. The country hopes the PM would be sensitive towards those who had suffered during the pandemic, those who lost their loved ones. It does not suit the Prime Minister to do politics on the sufferings of the people.”
Addressing the PM, the Congress wrote on its official Twitter handle, the country had witnessed how during the raging pandemic, Modi was doing a ‘Namaste Trump’ and playing with peacocks and parrots. Also, bodies were seen floating in the Ganga in the midst of election campaigning, it said, adding, “Pushing the famers to streets during the pandemic was also your doing,”
In another tweet, the Congress further hit back at the PM over China and how the founders of his party were opposed to the country's independence. “Your clean chit and silence towards China reveal that mindset,” it said.
In his reply to the debate on the President's address to the joint sitting of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Modi said the Congress had crossed all limits and sinned during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. “When people were following lockdowns across the world, Congress leaders were standing at Mumbai station and scaring innocent people."
"In Delhi, the government used mics on jeeps in slums to go home, arranged buses," the Prime Minister said, adding that in Uttar Pradesh and other states "where corona didn't have this intensity, there also coronavirus spread due to this."
The migrant crisis was one of the key issues during the outbreak of the pandemic which the Opposition has blamed on the government.
"During Covid, the Indian economy was the fastest growing in the world, farmers produced record quantity foodgrains… Lot of countries faced food shortages. But this country didn't let anyone die of hunger. India gave free ration to over 80 crore people and still giving," he said.
All this, he implied, was deliberate, because "some people thought Corona will ruin Modi's image". "Is it country not yours or the people? Aren't their happiness sorrows yours as well?" he said.