Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party (SP) on Wednesday said the Uttar Pradesh government, which claims that the World Health Organization (WHO) has lauded its COVID-19 management, has not hesitated from using unethical ways to hide its "failures".
In a statement issued here, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said the BJP government, which has "fudged" the figure of COVID casualties, is not even pained by the sight of bodies flowing in the Ganga and patients dying at the doorstep of hospitals.
"It would have been better had the chief minister informed us as regards when the poor people will be vaccinated and when action will be taken against those indulging in hoarding and black-marketing of oxygen cylinders, injections and medicines," he said.
The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said if the state government cannot provide free COVID vaccines to all, then after coming to power in 2022, the SP will inoculate everyone in the state for free.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said the WHO has praised the efforts of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh in tackling the pandemic.
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"You may or may not have seen today's news. The World Health Organization has praised the work of the Uttar Pradesh government. It is not a small thing," Singh, who represents Lucknow in the Lok Sabha, had said here.
In a tweet on Monday, the WHO said, "In #India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh, the state gov. has initiated house-to-house active case-finding of #COVID19 in rural areas to contain transmission by testing people with symptoms for rapid isolation, disease management & contact tracing."
SP MLC Ashutosh Sinha, who hails from Varanasi, said, "The BJP government has miserably failed in managing the COVID situation in the state. Black-marketing of Remdesivir injections is rampant. The demand for ''kafan'' (a piece of cloth used to wrap a dead body) is currently higher than that for clothes in Varanasi. People are even paying bribes at the crematoria to expedite the last rites of their near and dear ones."
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Congress leader from Mathura Pradeep Mathur said that when the elected public representatives are finding it difficult to get beds in hospitals, the plight of the common man is easily imaginable. "The BJP government has failed and it must relinquish the office," he said.
PTI
