Country needs to know when lockdown will be lifted; it's not on, off switch: Rahul tells govt

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said the country would lose the fight against coronavirus if it kept crucial decisions related to the pandemic only in the Prime Minister's Office. "PM must devolve power," he said, adding that the country needed to know when the lockdown would be lifted. "The central thing that government needs to do now is, give a little bit of transparency. We need to understand when they would open the lockdown, what will be the criteria," asked Rahul.

He said it's not the right time to criticise, and that India needed a concrete strategy to open the lockdown. "Any businessman will tell you that there is a clash between economic supply chain and 'red, orange and green zones', that need to be resolved," he maintained.

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He said the red, orange and green zones had been demarcated at the national level. However, they should be decided at state levels, involving district magistrates. "Our CMs are saying the areas that are red zones at the national level are actually green zones and vice versa," said Rahul. "Lockdown not an on/off switch, it is a transition that requires cooperation between the Centre, states and people," said Rahul.

Rahul said the country is in an emergency and that the idea of injecting a sum of Rs 7,500 directly into hands of poor was critical. "We have to protect job creators, build a wall for them to protect jobs, wages; we have to give them financial support," Rahul said. He said the domestic economy needed to be open soon. "The more time we lose, the worse impact it will have," said Rahul.

Total number of COVID-19 cases in India has climbed to 56,342, including 37,916 active cases, 16,539 recoveries and 1,886 deaths. As many as 3,390 new cases and 103 deaths were recorded in the country in the past 24 hours.

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