The Bihar government, reeling under the coronavirus disease, is consulting MPs, MLAs and MLCs from all parties through video conferencing to improve the pandemic’s management.

The process has not only started highlighting the ground reality, but is also attracting noteworthy suggestions from the public representatives.

The district magistrates of all 40 districts in the state are holding these virtual meetings in a phased manner since Thursday, and around a dozen of them have already gone through it.

These meetings were started on the directions of chief minister Nitish Kumar, who yielded to the long pending demand of public representatives cutting across party lines that the government should confabulate with them in this crisis. The demand was raised during the daylong monsoon session also on Monday.

Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA Suday Yadav from Jehanabad constituency pointed towards the weakness and lethargy being seen in the people who have defeated the virus and said at the meeting: “The state government and the district administration should provide a ‘nutrition kit’ to those who have recovered from corona so that they could bounce back to normal life quickly.”

Suday said at the meeting that people in the rural areas of Jehanabad, who turned positive, have to struggle for days to get themselves tested again to find out whether they were still infected or have become negative.

“Once a person living in any village here tests positive and is isolated at home, he has to wait endlessly to be tested again. The health department officials take him for granted and leave him to suffer instead of testing him again after 10 or 12 days to find out whether he is still positive or has turned negative. I suggested at the meeting that the government should envisage a plan to test such people again,” Suday told The Telegraph.

Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Sadanand Singh, who happens to be an MLA from Kahalgaon constituency in Bhagalpur district, pointed out that things have improved over the last couple of weeks with more ventilators, PPE kits and other facilities, and expressed satisfaction about Covid situation in his area.

However, he said that the Bihar government started preparing to deal with Covid-19 very late despite the fact that the Congress had been alerting both the central and the state governments. “The state government became alert very late and the virus had spread all over during this time. Besides, very few tests were conducted, so fewer cases were detected and the virus kept spreading silently. There was a scarcity of proper masks, PPE kits and other medical facilities and it worsened the situation,” Sadanand said.

“The people also are not maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, and are roaming around in the markets. There is a need to make them aware about the crisis we are facing and enforce the lockdown more strictly,” the senior Congress leader added.

Many legislators like Darauli MLA Mohammad Nemtullah in Gopalganj district could not attend the virtual meeting due to technical glitches in linking to it.

On the other hand, ruling party parliamentarians and legislators were all praise for the efforts by the state government in tackling the pandemic.

Ruling Janata Dal United (JDU) MP from Sitamarhi, Sunil Kumar Pintu, expressed satisfaction with arrangements in his area and said that the Covid centre functioning in his district was providing medical advice to quarantined or isolated people in a speedy and satisfactory manner.

“The state government’s efforts to involve public representatives are commendable. There is a need to talk nicely and patiently to the infected people. It boosts their confidence and makes them feel happy and cared,” Sunil said.

Asked about the virtual meetings with legislators and parliamentarians, a top government official told this newspaper on the condition of anonymity that the effort was “yielding good, workable suggestions and also revealing the things that need to be improved. It would have been better if we would have done this exercise earlier in April or May when the number of Covid-19 cases were less in the state.”

Bihar has witnessed 71,794 coronavirus cases so far and 400 persons have succumbed to the disease. The last 24 hours saw 3,646 persons being found infected in around 71,500 tests done across the state.