Gorantla Butchaiah Chowdary faults Modi for country's Covid calamity

Mangalagiri: TDP senior leader and MLA Gorantla Butchaiah Chowdary on Tuesday slammed the Narendra Modi governmentfor making India a 'laughing stock' in the eyes of the world with its thoughtless policies in tackling the coronavirus second wave in the country.

Butchaiah Chowdary said that the Covid-19 calamity was now threatening to tear whole India apart even as the situation was fast deteriorating in different states. Though Modi was elected for the second consecutive time in the hope of more progress, he eventually caused such a situation where the whole world was boycotting India right now.

Addressing a press conference at party state office here, the TDP MLA said that till recently, the Prime Minister spoke as if the country had triumphed over Covid and it was able to provide Covaxin and Covishield vaccines to other countries. Priority was given to religious and election propaganda till lots of lives were lost to the deadly infection. The rest of the world was viewing India with suspicion. In the capacity of the Prime Minister, Modi should stop the politics of conspiracy and narrow-mindedness and focus on the people's welfare.

Butchaiah Chowdary said that Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was causing even greater harm by totally neglecting the virus preventive measures and vaccination. There was no more guarantee for the lives of the AP people in the face of deadly threat from the second wave. The Chief Minister disregarded the cautionary advice given by the TDP and ignored the infections making his trademark 'paracetamol and bleaching powder' comments.

He termed it shameful on the part of the Chief Minister to spend hundreds of crores on the full front page advertisements for his personal publicity but not allocating funds for vaccination. It was Jagan Mohan Reddy who was responsible for the shortage of medicines, medical oxygen and hospital beds. The government should explain why it was not doing virus tests and what it did with the test kits, he said.

Butchaiah Chowdary said that the YSRCP leaders owed an explanation to the people for the lack of space to cremate bodies in the cremation grounds. No wonder the government might start a 'Jagananna Smasanam' (cremation or burial ground) to take advantage of the crisis in performing funeral rites in the state, he said.