Govt should rethink, can't have lockdown of people, economy: Congress

NEW DELHI: The Congress party on Saturday said that the Centre should rethink on its lockdown decision and come up with a national plan for coronavirus under the Disaster Management Act. The demand was made by senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal, who said that the Centre must formulate a national plan for COVID-19 under the Disaster Management Act to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

Commenting on the lockdown announced by the Centre, Sibal said, “It's time govt should rethink on lockdown measures; you cannot have lockdown of people and lockout of the economy.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to hold another meeting with chief ministers on Monday as the country enters into the last week of lockdown.

It may be noted that the main opposition party has written several letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the phase-wise withdrawal of lockdown and the problems being faced by the low-income groups and migrant labours.

The Congress party had on Friday slammed the government over the freezing of dearness allowance, asserting that it was not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and armed forces personnel.

The Finance Ministry on Thursday froze inflation-linked allowance for 50 lakh central government employees and 61 lakh pensioners till June 2021 due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, DA and dearness relief (DR) at current rates will continue to be paid, it said.

"We should be on the side of people whose dearness allowance is being cut. I sincerely believe it is not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and also on the armed forces people," former PM Dr Manmohan Singh said during the Congress's consultative group meeting whose video was released by the party on Saturday.

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi also slammed the government over the issue, saying the problem was with the government's going ahead with the central vista redevelopment project. "You are taking away money from the middle class, you are not giving money to the poor people and you are spending it on your central vista," Gandhi told the meeting.

Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said, "When you (government) have not cut back expenditure on the bullet train, central vista development, those are the programmes which should be first put on halt before you halt people's dearness allowance."

Former Union minister Manish Tewari said the first thing the government should have done before cutting allowances, salaries was to set up an expenditure rationalisation commission. Congress general secretary (organization) KC Venugopal said there is a lot of anguish among the government employees over the dearness allowance issue as it will harm them very much.

The Congress last week had constituted a consultative group with former prime minister Singh as its chairman to deliberate on "current concerns" and formulate views and policy of the party on important issues. Besides Singh, Gandhi, Surjewala, Venugopal and Tewari, former union minister Jairam Ramesh, Praveen Chakravarty, Gaurav Vallabh, Supriya Shrinath, and the party's social media head Rohan Gupta are also part of the panel.