Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday questioned the Centre’s efforts in containing the coronavirus outbreak in India and said the Narendra Modi-led government was missing in action even when the country’s tally has breached the 20-lakh mark. With 62,538 new cases in 24 hours, India’s tally on Friday rose to 20,27,074. The toll rose by 886 to 41,585.

“20 lakh ka ankada paar, gayab hai Modi sarkar [The 20 lakh-mark has been crossed, the Modi government is missing],” Gandhi tweeted. The Congress leader tagged his own tweet from July 17, in which he had warned that India will cross 20 lakh coronavirus cases by August 10.

Gandhi has frequently targeted Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government over the past two months since India has been walloped by Covid-19, accusing the government of failing to respond to the crisis. He often uses statistics and data to substantiate his claims.

On August 3, when India topped the list of countries for the daily number of cases, Gandhi tweeted a photograph showing that India had registered more cases on that day (52,972) than the United States (47,511). The United States is the worst-affected country by the pandemic in the world.

“The right decisions at the right time means India is better off than other countries.’ PM,” Gandhi tweeted. He was referring to Modi’s remark on his Mann ki Baat programme that India had handled the coronavirus crisis better than other countries because it had taken the “right decisions at the right time”.

Last month, Gandhi claimed that “millions of families” will be destroyed due to the economic mismanagement by the Centre. He made the remark a day after the Ministry of Finance projected that the Indian economy will grow at minus 4.5% in 2020-’21, thanks to the economic loss caused by the lockdowns imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

On July 6, claimed that in the future, Harvard Business School will have case studies on failures of the Modi-led government, such as its handling of the coronavirus crisis, demonetisation and the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.

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