Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said a full lockdown was the only way now to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

In a tweet, Gandhi advocated for restrictions to be imposed along with the minimum income guarantee, or Nyuntam Aay Yojana scheme, for the vulnerable sections.

The Congress had announced details of the minimum income scheme on March 25, 2019, to wrest the momentum back from the Bharatiya Janata Party just two weeks before the Lok Sabha elections began. However, the Congress suffered a major setback in the General Elections despite trying to project itself as pro-poor.

Under the NYAY scheme, Rs 72,000 per year will go straight into the bank accounts of beneficiaries through a direct benefit transfer.

“GOI [Government of India] doesn’t get it,” Gandhi tweeted on Tuesday. “GOI’s inaction is killing many innocent people.”

In another tweet, Gandhi said he was insisting on imposing a lockdown as it was the only option because of a “complete lack of strategy” by the central government.

“They allowed, rather, they actively helped the virus reach this stage where there’s no other way to stop it,” Gandhi tweeted.

The massive second wave of the pandemic has resulted in lockdowns and partial restrictions like weekend and night curfews in almost all states of the country. This is despite the fact that on April 20, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ruled out the possibility of a countrywide lockdown and asked states to undertake the measure as a “last resort”.

Last week, United States’ top infection disease expert Anthony Fauci had also suggested that India should impose an immediate shutdown for a few weeks to control the pandemic.

Meanwhile, India on Tuesday registered 3,57,229 new coronavirus cases, taking the tally in the country to 2,02,82,833 since the pandemic broke out in January 2020. This is the third consecutive day when the daily infection count dropped after crossing the 4-lakh mark. The toll climbed by 3,449 to 2,22,408. The number of active cases in the country stood at 34,47,133.


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