New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has hit out at the Congress and AAP government for indulging in petty politics at a time when the country is battling the second wave of the pandemic and its health infrastructure is under severe stress.
Slamming the Kejriwal government over the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma said that the nodal officers of the AAP government did not answer the distress calls of the hospital when they were running out of oxygen. She said that even the court pulled up the Delhi government for not taking due action on time when hospitals raised an alarm for shortage of oxygen.
It is pertinent to note that the Delhi High Court has asked the hospitals and nursing homes to approach the nodal officers of Delhi to meet the requirement of medical oxygen to treat seriously ill COVID-19 patients.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting and instructed that there should be production of 3,300 MT of oxygen per day. But why is the Delhi government not doing anything? Many hospitals informed the HC that nodal officers of the AAP did not receive the distress calls of the hospitals when patients were gasping for breath. The Central government is doing everything possible to fight the pandemic but the Kejriwal govt is busy in doing advertisements in the media. The state govt must reach out to the oxygen manufacturers and suppliers," Sharma said.
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"The Delhi government has spent Rs 150 crore in three months on advertisements but is not doing anything to solve the oxygen crisis in the national capital. The state govt has neither built any hospital nor procured any new ventilators. And on the other hand, the Central government has approved setting up seven oxygen plants but the state govt has done nothing," she added.
The BJP leader also attacked Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Shashi Tharoor, Jairam Ramesh and Anand Sharma for mudslinging the saffron camp.
"Gandhi is eligible for taking vaccine but he did not get himself inoculated and is engaged in twitter war to attack the govt. Tharoor and Sharma is creating vaccine hesitancy among the people. Congress-ruled states Punjab and Chhattisgarh have even said that they don't need Covaxin. Do these Congress leaders know more than our scientists, researchers and doctors?. Congress is claiming that people are not getting vaccinated but nearly 10 percent of India's population has received the first shot of the COVID vaccine. India is the second country after the US which is inoculating people at a faster pace," she claimed.
The Delhi High Court pulled up the Delhi government on the scarcity of oxygen in the hospitals and said they should not leave it entirely to the central government.
"If Delhi govt having an issue with tankers, they have to talk to suppliers directly. That's what every state is doing," the court said.
The Division Bench also pulled up the state government for not arranging their own cryogenic tankers for oxygen supply, after allocation from the Centre.
Hospitals in the national capital continued to send out SOS calls on Saturday morning appealing to authorities to arrange oxygen. Most of the big and top-notch hospitals - Sir Ganga Ram, LNJP and Batra - were running out of oxygen and were desperately trying to arrange for oxygen to save the lives of the patients.
The situation is no better in other states. People lost their lives in the hospitals of Punjab and Gujarat due to the shortage of oxygen supply.
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