New Delhi: Hitting out at the central government, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said the Centre could neither control the COVID pandemic nor address the problems of farmers and labourers.
“No control on the corona, not enough vaccines, no employment…Neither the farmers and the labourers are addressed, nor Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) safe. No middle class is satisfied…It was okay to eat mangoes, but you could have left the common man,” read Rahul’s tweet translated from Hindi.
Rahul’s remarks come against the backdrop when India reported more than 1.52 lakh new COVID-19 cases on Sunday. This is the fifth consecutive day when more than one lakh cases have been reported in the country.
According to the Union Health Ministry, the country recorded 1,52,879 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours. With this, the total number of infections has reached 1,33,58,805 in India.
Meanwhile, the four-day-long ‘Tika Utsav’, a mass Covid-19 vaccine programme, has started in the country on Sunday (Jyotirao Phule’s birth anniversary) to April 14 (B R Ambedkar’s birth anniversary), following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for the same.
From April 2, the government started vaccinating all people above 45 years. India started its vaccination drive on January 16 with priority given to all healthcare and frontline workers in the first phase. The second phase started on March 1 where doses were administered to people above the age of 60 and those between 45 and 59 years with specific comorbidities.