Covid-19: BJP in positivity overdrive; Congress cites crematoriums

The Congress on Friday ridiculed the central government asking it to go to a crematorium & tell grieving families to be "positive" as BJP government is fighting backlash on social media and growing criticism on its handling of the Covid crisis on the ground.

The BJP appeared to be going on an overdrive for image correction and countering the Opposition campaign around the "failure" in handling the pandemic.

A day after the open letter challenge by BJP chief J P Nadda to Sonia Gandhi that data will reveal which states which states failed to track the rising cases, Union Ministers and leaders from BJP sought to bring out the "contradiction" in the stand of Congress on Covid-19 related issues, including vaccination and pulled out old tweets of the Opposition party leaders to buttress their point.

Read | Jitendra Singh slams Congress for mocking Centre over handling of Covid-19 crisis

This comes after Congress having hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his "thundering silence" amid repeated appeals of states on oxygen scarcity and vaccine shortage. The Opposition has been raising questions on the absence of senior ministers of the government from the forefront in fighting Covid-19. Central ministers have avoided any direct media interaction on the pandemic issue so far, asking journos to keep their questions for the health minister's briefing on the pandemic instead.

Cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba on Tuesday, chairing a meeting on Covid with states, emphasised the need of keeping the public informed about the action taken by the Central and state governments and assured that no stone would be left unturned to provide timely oxygen supply and other medical resources to the hospitals.

Read | Priyanka attacks Centre over India's vaccine drive

Information and Broadcasting Ministry and BJP at the government and the party level are now pushing the message of positivity, repeatedly trotting out how the Prime Minister was leading from the front on the issue, how two indigenous vaccines were developed by the country and it became Aatmanirbhar in manufacturing masks and other Covid-related equipment in this period. RSS has asked its volunteers to chip in to provide succor to Covid victims as well as counter the atmosphere of negativity, though an RSS insider said this was not about government but countering pessimism among people.

Congress, however, took potshots at reports of a positivity drive. Rahul Gandhi said that the false assurance of 'positive thinking' is a joke on those families and health workers who have lost their loved ones and are suffering a crisis of oxygen, hospitals and medicines. Burying one's head in the sand is not positive - it is a betrayal of our citizens.

Launching a hashtag-BJPsPRUnlimited campaign on Twitter, Congress put out pictures of patients struggling for treatment and oxygen. The Modi Govt & the RSS plan to start a "Positivity Unlimited" campaign to dispel criticism. What they fail to understand once again is that propaganda will never hide the truth of India's pain.

"Go to a crematorium & tell grieving families to be "positive". Go to a hospital & tell overwhelmed doctors & nurses to be "positive". Hold a PC & tell journalists who have lost their colleagues to be "positive"," the Congress said.

BJP leader Anurag Thakur, however, slammed what he called confused commentary of Congress while Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri put out tweets of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on January 4 and April 21 to allege the congress party’s narrative on the vaccines is getting increasingly bizarre by the day.

"Mr Tharoor’s tweets of 2021 alone would qualify for a book on self-contradictions.

After consistently airing doubts on vaccine efficacy, he has made a turnaround on 28 April 2021, but not without pointing out that he wasn’t wrong about being wrong! Imagine the situation if GoI had heeded his ‘advice’ & waited till two weeks back to start vaccine production," Puri said.

BJP national general secretary of Goa, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu CT Ravi tweeted "Nehru Dynasty built just 2 AIIMS in 48 years. PM Vajpayee built 6 AIIMS in 6 years. PM @narendramodi built 14 AIIMS in just 7 years. But, according to CONgress & its Ecosystem, India is managing #COVID19 pandemic only because the Dynasty built hospitals. Let this sink in ! !"