New Delhi, Apr 9 (UNI) Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Beghal on Thursday criticised Narendra Modi government over the steps taken by the latter to contain the spread of Coronavirus, saying, “Centre should have stopped all international flights at the earliest and the passengers should been quarantined compulsory”.
“This could have prevented the spread of the Coronovirus", the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister said in a ‘special press conference’ via video conference.
Referring to the Prime Minister’s scheduled meeting with Chief Ministers on April 11 over the lockdown, Mr Beghal said that Union government did not seek state government’s opinion while announcing the lockdown.
“Now the Centre is reaching out to the state governments for their view on lifting the lockdown”, he said, added, he had written to Mr Modi on lifting the inter-state travel bans, which may come up during the meeting on April 11.
The Chhattisgarh Chief Minister also blamed Union government for allowing Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Delhi and said the meeting was happened despite prohibitory orders.
“The Tablighi meeting could also not have happened. I am not giving clean chit to any organisation,", he added.
Describing the steps taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister said, as soon as former Congress president Rahul Gandhi expressed concern about this issue, the state government started the preration.
“On March 13, we first closed educational institutions, malls, talkies and ministries. The first test was conducted on March 15 and we got the first positive case on March 18. On the same day, we imposed Section 144 in the entire state and on March 21, we locked down the entire state” the Chief Minister said.
He said at present, about 76,000 people are in home quarantine in Chhattisgarh and the government is properly monitoring them.
“We completely sealed the state borders and then closed the boundaries of the districts. This awareness also reached the villages and people closed the boundaries of their villages themselves. People living outside the village were kept in quarantine when they returned to the village. Overall we got good success in rural areas also”, he added.
On economy, Mr Baghel said, the government worked on a strategy to control the price of vegetables.
“We started the vegetable market, arrangements were made to harvest the vegetables and for transport. This reduced the price of vegetables by 50 per cent. There are around 65 lakh ration cards in Chhattisgarh, of which around 56 lakh are BPL. We decided to give them 2 months of free ration. We gave 70 kg of rice in one go and until yesterday rice has reached about 40 lakh families”, he said.
The Chief Minister also pointed out that many people in the village do not have a ration card.
“For them we kept 2 quintals of rice at the panchayat level. We spoke to industrialists regarding labourers in urban areas and got them one month's salary, food and shelter. 39 lakh labourers benefited from this. We are constantly making arrangements for food and lodging of about 10,000 labourers from other states. We waived off two months of electricity bills to avoid queues and chaos. General promotion was given to the children of class 8th-9th and 11th. We home delivered meals for anganwadi children”, he added.
Referring to the situation in the state, Mr Baghel said, another patient was found yesterday and out of 11 patients, 9 have gone home healthy.
“The area from which the 11th patient was found has been completely locked down” and added that the state government will begin taking ‘random sample’ soon as suggested by Mr Gandhi.
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