Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday hit out at the Centre, saying that the government’s “repeated chest-thumping” at receiving foreign aid for tackling the coronavirus crisis is “pathetic”.

“Had GOI [government of India] done its job, it wouldn’t have come to this,” he tweeted.

Several countries, including the United States, Canada, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Romania, Singapore, Sweden and Kuwait, have sent aid to India in its battle against the coronavirus, reported PTI.

Last week, Gandhi had demanded transparency and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make public the details of all the relief material received by India.

On May 3, Scroll.in was the first to report that 300 tonnes of foreign assistance had arrived at Delhi airport since April 28, but states were yet to hear about their share in it. The next day, the Central government said the materials had been dispatched to 31 states and Union Territories. “All possible attempts have been made to distribute them immediately,” the statement released by the Union health ministry said.

Interviews of state officials, however, revealed that the distribution process began as late as May 3 evening, more than a week after the first batch of emergency Covid-19 assistance arrived in India.

On May 5, a day after the Centre said it had dispatched Covid-19 relief supplies donated by other countries to states and medical institutions across India, some hospitals identified as the recipients still awaited the supplies.

India registered 3,66,161 new coronavirus cases on Monday morning, taking the tally of infections in the country to 2,26,62,575 since the pandemic broke out in January last year. With 3,754 deaths, the toll climbed to 2,46,116. There are 37,45,237 active cases and 1,86,71,222 patients have recovered from the infection so far.

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‘After cities, now villages also dependent on God’: Rahul Gandhi

In another tweet on Sunday, Gandhi had criticised the Union government for the surge in coronavirus cases in India, saying that after the severe impact of the pandemic among residents of cities, those in rural areas were “also dependent on god”.

In his tweet, Gandhi cited a headline saying that the second wave of the coronavirus was now wreaking havoc in India’s villages.

Nearly half of the new coronavirus cases in India were now emerging in rural areas, the Hindu had reported on Friday, citing a State Bank of India report.

On May 7, a report by Reuters noted that coronavirus patients in Madhya Pradesh’s Susner town were being treated on blankets on the ground and under trees.

In villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, there was a lack of testing facilities, due to which coronavirus cases may have been under-reported, according to ThePrint.

The Opposition has repeatedly criticised the Centre for the way it is handling the second wave of the coronavirus.

On Monday, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati demanded that the states governments contain the spread of the coronavirus infection in rural areas on a war footing.

She pointed to the news about the spread of infection in villages of Uttar Pradesh after panchayat polls were held in the state. “There is fear among people,” she tweeted. The government should work it on a war footing. That’s BSP’s demand.”

In a series of tweets, she said that the infection was spreading rapidly in rural areas of the states where Assembly elections were recently held. “State governments there also need to pay special attention to this, this is the advice of the BSP,” Mayawati said.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, Rahul Gandhi had said it showed the government’s “hubris” when the Modi administration declared “premature victory” against the coronavirus.

“Today the disease is growing explosively,” Gandhi had said. “It is currently on the verge of overwhelming all of our systems. [The] GOI’s [government of India] failures have made another devastating national lockdown almost inevitable.”

Gandhi had also cautioned the Centre about the possibility of more coronavirus mutations originating in India. The Congress leader urged the government to track the virus’ variants through genome sequencing, assess efficacy of vaccines against various strains and keep the rest of the world informed about the findings.

On the Centre’s vaccine policy, Gandhi had criticised the “lack of a clear and coherent strategy” and urged the government to inoculate the country’s entire population in a swift manner.

Meanwhile, the Congress appealed to the Centre to listen to suggestions from the states to curb India’s spiralling Covid-19 crisis.

The party’s President Sonia Gandhi, during a meeting on May 7, had asked for inputs from all legislators on how to handle the crisis. She reportedly said that tackling the pandemic would require able, calm and visionary leadership, and appealed to the prime minister to take suggestions from states.