NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said in the Rajya Sabha that India took a leadership role during the Covid pandemic.
Replying to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address in the Upper House, he said that Covid is a global pandemic and in the past 100 years, humanity never witnessed such a pandemic. The danger is there and changing its form, causing the entire world to struggle.
“People around the world were wondering what will happen to India and how it will impact the entire globe but today,the world is praising efforts made by India, this is India’s achievement, not of a particular political party. You (Opposition) should have taken benefit of this; do we need to teach you even this? Modi quipped.
Listing the various measures taken by the Central government, the Prime Minister said that despite the negative campaign against vaccines in many parts of the world, we decided that no one should suffer and we accelerated the vaccine drive. We are going ahead at a fast pace, he added.
“Some leaders campaigned against vaccines. However this country’s public was aware and they decided to go for vaccination and stood in queues to get the jab,” Modi said, adding that the country is heading towards 100 percent vaccination soon.
Thanking the frontline health workers, doctors and scientists’ unrelenting efforts to fight this pandemic, Modi said that we all are thankful to them and the House should also appreciate their efforts which will also increase their courage to serve the people.
Talking about the Covid 19 period, he said that in fact during the corona time, the farmers continued to produce bumper crops and the government also procured grains in huge quantities. The same focus was given to the various infrastructure projects to generate employment.
He also said that the farm sector has produced bumper wheat and rice crops and the government had also procured these crops on increased MSP wherein the money was transferred to their accounts directly through the Direct Benefit Transfer. The farmers in Punjab were saying that such a huge amount was never transferred to their accounts in the past, he added.
On this, Leader of Opposition Kharge quipped that by making the reference to the farmers of Punjab, he was trying to take political benefits in the Punjab Assembly election. The other parties on the Opposition benches joined Kharge on this.
He also said that the government took care of the poor and over 82 crore poor people have been given free rations since then and till the pandemic is there, the government will spend on the poor people.
Be it the northeast region or Jammu and Kashmir, development took place during Covid-19 wave. Sportspersons brought laurels to the country; they did not let it impact their performance. “We continued our efforts to give houses to the poor and over five crore houses have been provided with tap water connection in the country.”
Hitting out at the Congress Party again on the federal structure, Modi said that the whole Covid period was an example of this. With an open mind, we held 23 meetings with Chief Ministers, and everyone contributed their best in dealing with the pandemic.
He also mentioned that during the All Party Meeting on corona, some attempts were made to boycott the meeting. “Sharad ji (Sharad Pawar) said that he could not force anyone to not come, you boycotted (without naming Congress), even TMC came,” he added.
“This was a crisis on humanity, on the country, despite that people didn’t turn up. I don’t know who your advisers are. Pick up the next day’s newspapers, your actions were criticised,” Modi added.
